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Writing for a Real World 2003-2004: a multidisciplinary anthology by usf students

Writing for a Real World 2003-2004: a multidisciplinary anthology by usf students

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Writing for a Real World
2003 - 2004
a multidisciplinary anthology by usf students
Published by the University of San Francisco for the
Program in Rhetoric and Composition
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Acknowledgments 4
Honorable Mention 7
Essays
EGYPTIAN LITERARY CENSORSHIP
Julia Smith 8
SPRECHEN SIE DEUTSCH?
Mariella Brodersen 20
THE CUBAN EMBARGO
Nicholas Miller 29
THE SAND CRAB
Perrine Sarchet 36
NATURAL CAPITAL
Connor Narciso 43
METAPHORIC TRUTH
Pepper Austin 55
THE PROGRESSION OF WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS’ USE OF IMAGERY
Hyun-Young Cho 62
INTO THE BLUE
Shannon Salter 70
WHOEVER SAID TV WAS BAD FOR YOU?
Renee Olsen 81
Table of Contents
Writing for a Real World
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THE HEALTHY FOREST RESTORATION ACT: A NEW PATH FOR
DESTRUCTION
Calder Lorenz 87
MARRIAGE AND EQUALITY IN CALIFORNIA
Igor Vainshtein 96
Science, Technical and Business Writing
ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AND PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIPS
Stephanie Bousley 104
ALUMINUM FILM DEPOSITION AND PHOTOLITHOGRAPHY
Monika Bough 115
COMMUNITY-BASED APPROACH TO ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
Vivian Chang and Eliot Metzger 126
HAWAII HIGH SCHOOL INCIDENT REPORT
Kala Stringert 140
SINGLE MOTHERS IN MALAYSIA: THE INTERLOCKING SYSTEMS OF
DOMINATION
Puspa Melati Nan 145
University of San Francisco
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Acknowledgments
The second issue of Writing for a Real World continues to
showcase excellent undergraduate writing and celebrate
outstanding undergraduate instruction at the University of San
Francisco. Our special anthology offers two distinct sections: the
first devoted to remarkable examples of the traditional academic
essay, the second providing a forum for worthy models of
scientific, business and technical report writing. Preceding these
essays and reports are introductions from the writers and their
teachers. These commentaries help elucidate the intentions behind
the assignments and give insight into the responses of the students.
Continuing a project like Writing for a Real World requires the
selfless efforts of many pairs of hands, and we acknowledge the
contributions and skills of those who continue to make this
publication possible. We are deeply grateful to Jennifer Turpin,
Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Dean Rader,
Associate Dean of Arts and Humanities, College of Arts and
Sciences, for their generous financial support and remarkable
commitment to undergraduate writing. A large debt, as well, goes
to Freddie Wiant, Coordinator of the Program in Rhetoric and
Composition, for her enthusiastic support in the production of
Writing for a Real World. We also thank Carol Faldet of Johnson
Printing Service, for helping us get this edition onto the printed
page, and publication committee members Mark Meritt, Devon
Christina Holmes and Brian Komei Dempster for shepherding
another edition of this anthology by providing astute editorial
support.
Choosing the winning entries is a labor-intensive, day-long
task that requires the purely voluntary efforts of already over-committed
USF faculty members. Our judges reviewed carefully
more than 140 submissions (from which the students’ names had
been removed). Every submission was read by at least two
readers, and every winning submission had to pass the review of at
least four readers. For performing this prodigious task with
unfailing grace and patience, we humbly thank the superb efforts
of our volunteer readers: Allan Cruse, Brian Komei Dempster,
Writing for a Real World
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University of San Francisco
Evan Elliot, Devon Christina Holmes, Kristen Kennedy, Saera R.
Khan, Mark Meritt, Maureen O’ Sullivan, Darrell g. h. Schramm,
Kern Trembath, Sally Vance-Trembath, Zachary M. White and
Freddie Wiant. Their focused dedication to USF students breathes
life into Writing for a Real World.
Our resident guardian angels, Sara Allshouse and Sandy
Teixeira, deserve special mention for managing our submissions,
keeping us passably sane, and helping us in ways too numerous to
describe. Thanks, too, to Michelle Squitieri for timely pizza on
judgment day, to John Pinelli and Norma Washington for balancing
the budget, and to Johnnie Hafernik, Chair of Communication
Studies, for her friendly encouragement and for helping us get the
word out to students and faculty.
Finally, thank you to all the teachers who encouraged students
to submit their work—both from our main campus and our
regional campuses. Our deepest gratitude is reserved for those
brave hearted students for daring to accept their challenge. The
competition was stiff, and, as our Honorable Mention list shows,
we received many more commendable essays and reports than we
were able to include. Congratulations to those who earned
honorable mention—we hope to hear from you again next year.
And, of course, congratulations to this year’s winners, four of
whom repeat from last year. Our newest authors bravely enter the
realm of published authors writing for a real world.
—David C. Ryan and Victor Squitieri, Editors
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on the web at www.usfca.edu/rhetcomp/journal/
Writing for a Real World
University of San Francisco
Cowell Hall, 4th Floor
2130 Fulton Street
SF, CA 94117
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Honorable Mention
Casey Farmer
18 Wayfarer
Robert Fischer
Reinvigorating Youth Political Involvement
Alexis Hisaka
Newsmedia: Complete Truth or Exaggerated Truth?
Courtney Howard
Incident Report: World Class Coffee and Confections
Chad Mahalich
Persuasion and Subliminal Messages
and
Communicatory Problems in the Workplace
Heidi Rabanes
Multiple Teachers, One Lesson: A Team-Effort Against
Childhood Obesity
Crystal Roberts
Female Pop-Artists: Advocates of Gender Stereotypes
Shannon Salter
An Ugly Business
and
The Bubble
Hajra Sheikh
Gurinder Chadha’s ‘Bend It Like Beckham’
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Egyptian Literary Censorship: A Violation
of Rights and Repression of Intellectual
Thought
Julia Smith
Instructor’s comment: For the major research paper in the Writing
Seminar, students were asked not only to create a proposal for a
carefully researched issue beyond the reach of the United States
and suggest a few steps toward a possible solution but also to, in
the end, write an actual letter (which I mailed) to a person in a
decision-making capacity regarding the problem and the suggested
proposal. Because Julia's sister attended a university in Cairo, both
sisters were concerned if not frustrated at the lack of access to
certain fields of knowledge. Among the emphases of the course, as
in the Jesuit mission, is the promotion of intellectual inquiry and
the endeavor to see more than two sides to an issue, as well as
writing, for the greater common good. Julia took these goals to
heart in choosing her topic for investigation. She followed her
carefully formal essay with a respectfully written letter to a person
in position of authority suggesting possible steps toward
decreasing censorship.
— Darrell g.h. Schramm, Rhetoric and Composition
Writer’s comment: As an English major and lover of language and
literature, I find the topic of freedom of speech and literary
expression a pressing issue. When Professor Schramm asked us to
write a proposal relating to human rights, I felt this assignment
would be a good opportunity to explore censorship. As I
researched the facets of oppression and denial of civil liberties in
Egypt, I was struck by the increasingly widespread censorship of
writers and artists and chose to address this concern. I found this
paper to be a welcome challenge — I was required not only to
research a social problem but propose a plan of action to remedy
this problem. This requirement allowed me to voice more of my
own concerns and ideas about censorship in general and think
more about solutions for other social injustices.
— Julia Smith
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Egyptian Literary Censorship
Introduction
Books have traditionally played an important role in Islamic
society, furthering the spread of the Muslim religion
through the distribution of the Qu’ran and also making
Islamic scholars famous for their ventures into science, religion
and literature. The Muslims’ scholarly thirst and the Qu’ran, which
is central to the Islamic faith, have ensured that books were kept a
critical part of scholarly, religious, and daily life. However,
according to Dr. Fauzi M. Najjar, Professor Emeritus of Political
Science at Michigan State University in his article “Book Banning
in Contemporary Egypt,” there have been a number of assaults in
Egypt directed at the written works as well as at the writers and
scholars who produced them. Over the centuries, these books and
writers have been condemned mainly for political or religious
reasons (400).
Many scholars, religious officials, and members of the public
have opposed this censorship because it undermines the freedom of
both authors and readers. Egyptian writer Eduard Al-Kharrat gives
an oft-heard reason for this anti-censorship feeling in his argument
for the controversial author Salman Rushdie: “Without freedom no
creative work is even conceivable. It is not sufficient that the artist
should merely consider himself essentially free; the work of art
itself must also become a freedom—of choice and of construction”
(32). The greater flow of ideas and scholarly thought has been
suppressed for the past several decades due to censorship of books
that challenge commonly held beliefs of Islam. In general, books
are held in high esteem by Muslims; however, some books have
been banned, denied entrance to society, even burned. It is
understandable that the government and people would not want
their religion to be attacked or desecrated in these books; however,
the long-standing laws and agreements Egypt abides by allow for
this freedom of expression. It is by challenging the mind and
thoughts that we learn. Therefore, the censorship of books and
authors hinders advances, like those made throughout history,
which preserve Egypt’s intellectual life. Unfortunately, the
practice of book banning in Egypt has reached new heights in
recent years; I will be exploring the magnitude and severity of this
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Julia Smith
practice, along with the disadvantages it poses to Egyptian society
and the violations against human rights it envelops.
Statement of the Problem
During the past two decades, censorship has become a highly
controversial issue in Egypt. There has been conflict between the
government and scholarly institutions and the artists and writers of
Egypt, confusion and debate over which materials pose threats to
the good of society and Islam, and insistence and refutation of
rights. First, I would like to focus on the laws and branches of
administration that manage the censorship of books and the
protection of Islam through this censorship. In 1985, al-Azhar, the
university established by the government as the “supreme Islamic
institution which safeguards, honors, and disseminates Islamic
heritage,” was also entrusted with the responsibility of overseeing
the “publication, translation, and composition of intellectual
material” through its Islamic Research Academy. This institution
has been managing the publication of everything relating to
religion with the Council of Ministries and Ministries of Culture,
Interior and Defense. These offices decide which books and other
printed materials can and will be printed and distributed in Egypt
as well as the distribution of foreign publications in Egypt (Najjar
403-405).
Laws and rulings made during the past fifty years in particular
have expanded the jurisdiction of agencies that oversee printed
material and also broadened measures the government may use
regarding prevention of objectionable work being sold or
published. In fact, an Egyptian judge even ruled unexpurgated
copies of A Thousand and One Nights to contain objectionable
passages which “posed a threat to the country’s moral fabric.”
Copies of this work, which is recognized as being very significant
to Arabic heritage, were seized and confiscated. A censorship
committee established in 1962 under the Emergency Laws of the
Suez War was given authority to seize books and printed materials
from bookstores, publishing houses and even from private
libraries. Several subsequent laws expanded the scope of
restriction of printed (as well as other musical and artistic) work;
these gave various ministries the power to ban or censor any
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Egyptian Literary Censorship
publications that contain objectionable sexual content, attack or
challenge Islam or other religions, promote atheism, or cross any
moral boundary they see fit. Along with these guidelines set by the
government, there is the additional limitation: publications are
subject to examination before production or distribution, and are
prohibited if they are not examined (Najjar 401-404). These laws
were made to further promote Islam and stop religious extremism;
however, some argue that they were also made on political grounds
and contradict other rules and the Egyptian constitution.
With the understanding of the aforementioned laws and
regulations, many organizations and individuals contest their
enforcement, claiming it is a violation of human rights as well as
other existing Egyptian law. The Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, which Egypt has signed, calls for the protection of “the
moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary,
or artistic production” in Article 27, in addition to the right to
freedom of opinion and expression and to “seek, receive, and
impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of
frontiers” in Article 19 (31, 35). On these articles alone, the
censorship of these printed materials conflicts with Egyptian law.
However, Najjar also makes the case that Egypt holds its own
freedom of expression and freedom of the press clauses in its own
constitution: Article 48 guarantees “freedom of the press, printing,
publication and the information media.” The rector of al-Azhar,
Shaykh Muhammead Sayyid Tantawi, whose university plays such
a large role in censorship, even wrote during the controversy of
Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses that “the best remedy for
people like [Rushdie] is to read the book and refute it scientifically,
thus unveiling its falsehoods and exposing its author” (Najjar 401).
However, in his compilation 100 Banned Books: Censorship
Histories of World Literature, Dr. Nicholas Karolides points out
that The Satanic Verses, a novel recognized and awarded the world
over, is banned in Egypt and thusly not available for scholarly
examination and refutation (255). Despite the many cases of
harassment of journalists and banning of books, the Egyptian
government holds the position that its agencies and laws governing
censorship are much more lenient than other countries. This may
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Julia Smith
be true; however, denying that censorship exists seems almost
absurd.
Richard Engel, a journalist for the Middle East Times,
conducted an interview with Lutfi Abdel Kader, head of the office
responsible for reviewing foreign publications before they gain
admittance. Kader implied that censorship is not an issue in Egypt,
reporting, “Censorship was canceled following a decision of
President Sadat in 1974. Since this date our work is only now to
see what the news media write about Egypt. There is no
censorship.” Kader goes on to say that if there is a writer or issue
the office does not approve of, the office dictates that it must not
be published again. Regarding the issue of writings concerning the
Islamic religion, he reported, “You can write about Islam what you
like, but not attacking it” (Engel). However, if this is the case, I
think it is clear that freedom of the press or opinion is not allowed.
Writers may not report or discuss certain issues, and certainly not
every statement regarding opinion of Islam is permitted. Although
the government gives the impression that censorship does not
happen very often, Lutfi Kader commented that his office sees
papers that “must” be censored as often as once a week (Engel).
Another official, Abdel-Aziz Ibrahim, secretary-general of the
Islamic Research Academy, quoted that in 1999, as many as 250
written works discussing Islam were censored, and another 16,000
cassette tapes on Islamic subjects were banned (El-Din). These
numbers show an alarming rate of censorship, but it is not confined
to religious subjects. As for political content in newspapers and
other printed materials, Thomas Cromwell, publisher of the Middle
East Times, reported that there are no independent political
newspapers or media in Egypt; all major media outlets are
government- or party-controlled (Cromwell). Thus, the press of
Egypt and whatever thoughts it attempts to present are censored by
the government for whichever reasons it chooses to give – or in
some cases, withhold.
The strict regulations and severe censorship of books in Egypt
obviously make for many reports of book banning and writer
harassment, in some cases for no clear reason. Accordingly, I will
discuss the confiscation and censorship of particular books in the
general market of the Egyptian public as well as in scholarly
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Egyptian Literary Censorship
institutions, which some activists argue is “intellectual terrorism”
(Najjar 402). Some cases of banned books are known the world
over because of international controversy, like Salman Rushdie’s
works; others are particular to Egypt. One recent book whose
censorship was highly debated is Al Wasaya fi Ishq Al-Nisaa
(translated as Commandments for Loving Women) by poet Ahmed
Al-Shahawi. The conservative Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram
Weekly Online reported the book was on the market, and then was
removed due to a religious official’s complaint. However, a
committee examining the book following the complaint supported
its publication (Rakha). Although, in this case, the author’s rights
were ultimately supported, many writers and publishers are not so
lucky. The same newspaper detailed the account of Haydar
Haydar’s experience: his book A Banquet of Seaweed was
condemned in 2000 for sexually explicit passages; its content so
outraged the president of al-Azhar University that he urged that
copies of the book be burned (El-Din). Al-Shahawi and Haydar
are only two examples of many current authors whose books face
censorship or prohibition and who may also experience constant
harassment. Nawal El Saadawi is a woman who knows her
country’s censorship policy all too well. In an article for the Index
on Censorship in 1990, the writer and women’s issues activist
discussed the actions taken against her and her books. El Saadawi
said that her book The Naked Face of Arab Eve was banned from
entry to Egypt because of its supposedly blasphemous content –
“religion, sex, and the ruling establishment” (16). After its
publication, political and religious authorities pressured the
Ministry of Health to dismiss El Saadawi from her post there; she
also lost her positions as chief editor of a health journal and in the
Medical Association of Egypt. She received death threats by
fundamentalists and others who opposed her work before leaving
the country to teach abroad in 1992 (Karolides 207). What is
obvious, Egyptian authors not only must fear censorship and
prohibition of their controversial work but also live in danger for
voicing their opinions.
Universities are considered to be places of learning where our
newest generations prepare to step into the adult world. However,
even the most prestigious and Westernized universities in Egypt
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Julia Smith
have had their libraries censored. My older sister Melissa attended
the American University at Cairo from 1996-1997 to further her
study of anthropology. She happened to attend at a time when
there was controversy regarding books assigned as required
material at AUC and described the circumstances and atmosphere
surrounding this affair to me in an interview (Smith). The books in
question were considered classics: The Prophet by Khalil Jibran,
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov and Maxime Rodinson’s Muhammad.
All were previously assigned as required reading for some classes
but were removed from the university’s libraries after undergoing
extreme pressure from the Egyptian Censor. The books were
considered to be an attack on Islamic values and the minds of the
students attending the school, and therefore removed to protect the
students’ well-being (Najjar 402). Melissa witnessed the reactions
of the students and said that some students agreed with the
censorship, claiming that they did not want to be exposed to the
material. However, many others argued that they should be
permitted access to these works and were angered that their
institution’s libraries would be restricted in content. Melissa also
told me that students from Egypt studying abroad at the University
of California, Santa Cruz, were amazed at the volumes of books
that were openly available at UCSC; these books were the very
same which had been banned in the libraries at AUC due to
government intervention.
Melissa spent her year at AUC learning Arabic and studying
anthropology, becoming very familiar with the Islamic culture
present in Egypt: its traditions, strongholds, and weaknesses. She
acknowledged the reasons for the universities’ censorship, but
wondered whether it was holding back an essential part of
students’ schooling to keep them ‘protected’ from new ideas
(Smith). This idea of censorship repressing intellectualism has
also been expressed in the much-praised report from the United
Nations, the Arab Human Development Report of 2003. In a press
release titled “A Call to ‘Reclaim Arab Knowledge’” regarding the
report, which was written by recognized Arab scholars and opinion
leaders, the immediacy of the need to take action against
censorship was stressed: “Arab leaders need to close a ‘growing
knowledge gap’ by investing heavily in education and promoting
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Egyptian Literary Censorship
open intellectual inquiry.” The release emphasized the way that
Arab countries, including Egypt, are falling behind their peers due
to unnecessary censorship which results in a lower-rate of
education (1).
The consequences of letting this problem remain are already
visible and will continue to grow if Egypt’s leaders do not devise a
solution to allow real freedom of speech and opinion through the
press. The public has shown its opposition to the government’s
censorship policy and Egyptian education and culture are suffering.
The Egyptian branch of the International Pen Club has even gone
so far as to say that book banning “encourages intellectual
terrorism, driving society into atrophy and backwardness” (Najjar
402). Perhaps this candid statement, however, is what the
government needs to hear. Egyptian writers who wish to use their
freedom of expression are fleeing the country fearing censorship or
harassment from religious extremists, creating a dearth of new
work. Although the country boasts the Nobel prize winning writer
Naguib Mahfuz, a successor from Egypt may be among the ranks
of writers leaving the country to gain creative freedom (Najjar
421). In fact, at this year’s International Conference on the Arab
Novel in October, the novelist who was recognized for the highest
award in Arabic literature declined the money and title. The
reasoning behind Sonallah Ibrahim’s actions? In his own words, he
decided to “publicly decline the prize because it is awarded by a
government that, in my opinion, lacks the credibility of bestowing
it.” Ibrahim used his acceptance speech to express his solidarity
with the movement of cultural and literary freedom (Mehrez).
Ibrahim’s decision speaks powerfully and sums up the desperate
need for a solution to this repression.
Proposal
To preserve and revive its intellectual life, Egypt must take
steps to cut down on needless censorship and bring scholarly
challenge back to its university systems by providing a broader
range of available materials. I will outline a possible course of
action which takes into account both the concerns of religious and
scholarly leaders.
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Julia Smith
The beginning step in reconciling Egypt’s policies and the
freedom of speech they currently deny lies in honesty, clear
guidelines, and rules unmotivated by politics and power. In order
to create a greater degree of creative freedom, the government
must honestly and straightforwardly relax the current guidelines,
which include so many possible objections that they could
condemn practically any written work. Working with academic
leaders, the government could craft guidelines which allow more
publications to stay uncensored. This sort of relaxed rule might
cause some members of the religious community to argue that
without the current limitations, writers could possibly blaspheme
the Muslim religion – the reason most commonly cited for
censorship. However, despite what the Egyptian public is allowed
to see, Islam will still be depicted in a light seen as unfavorable
due to other countries’ freedom of expression. What the new
Egyptian guidelines will provide for, however, is an opportunity
for more discussion of Islam, unfettered by limitations. Works
produced under these guidelines may be used to further Islamic
culture throughout the world through Egyptian writing.
Once writers have greater control over their creative
expression, there doubtless will be attacks on authors writing about
any subject from those with opposing viewpoints. Currently, many
writers have been harassed and physically harmed for the content
of their writing. Authors have been attacked by people with
opposing viewpoints and some even face fatwas, or bounties,
decreed by individuals or private organizations for their deaths
(Najjar 402). Therefore, there need to be provisions to protect all
artists and writers, regardless of their views or opinions. A specific
law making persecution or harassment of writers and journalists
illegal would help ensure everyone’s safety and provide an
environment in which writers are not afraid to voice their opinions.
This law should not be an extra burden to enforce; it simply
extends and ensures personal safety for all people and reduces the
climate of hostility. It may be argued that this law is unnecessary,
but the sheer number of writers affected by this type of harassment
shows that an additional precaution is important. I believe that
once the government has specifically made provisions for this
protection and enforces it by prosecuting those who do disobey the
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law, it will cut down on the number and severity of attacks against
authors and journalists.
The third step in improving the situation of censorship would
be to reevaluate appointment of members to committees that
oversee publication of written work. At this moment, committees
are composed of officials who are very biased towards censorship.
High-ranking religious and political officials decide which material
will benefit the Egyptian public, which many times does not agree
with their decisions. This executive power needs to be distributed
among people of many different backgrounds to avoid one-sided
evaluations of publications. In order to make this process more
fair (and hopefully one day eliminate it completely), committee
members should be elected and appointed by the people who will
be affected by their choices —the Egyptian public. The public’s
election of a more well-rounded committee including religious and
academic leaders may help to evaluate written work on a larger
scale of benefits. In this way, the decision making process is
democratized and made more accessible to the general public, who
has shown dissatisfaction with the current system.
Many important scholars and the Egyptian university students
at large have expressed their frustration with the censorship of
university libraries. Thus, an important step in the solution process
is to restore institutional libraries to their former greatness,
returning banned books to the shelves so that more material and
ideas are available to the academic world. A great number of
books were used in university libraries for a number of years, and
then were removed due to a few complaints. These books, such as
the three classics banned at the American University at Cairo,
should be returned to the scholarly community, where they had
been used previously without any objection. Members of the
academic community have shown support for the expansion of the
libraries to include controversial books, as all the material furthers
the students’ knowledge and sense of liberty and prepares them to
be the next generation of high-achieving Egyptians. These steps
may help to calm tensions between opposite-thinking groups and
restore the flow of thought and creativity. To quote writer Eduard
Al-Kharrat, in order to help Egypt retain its heritage, “[W]e must
continue to summon everyone to take part in the dialogue” (34).
Egyptian Literary Censorship
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Julia Smith
Conclusion
The increasing repression of printed publications that the
Egyptian government considers objectionable is causing a major
problem in the intellectual realm and elsewhere. Laws,
government agencies and religious institutions are subjecting
books to excessive censorship, and their attitude fosters an
environment in which free speech is severely limited. As many
Arab scholars and writers have collectively argued, this
environment is not conducive to creativity and the
accomplishments and growth that accompany it. Censorship is
especially affecting the academic community—the universities of
Egypt and the books their libraries offer to students. According to
the United Nations Development Programme’s press release on its
Arab Human Development Report, “The educational system has
failed to connect Arab literature as a living medium to Arab culture
and society,” depriving students of the fullest education (3). This
censorship of written work and harassment of its authors must be
stopped, and the Egyptian government must play the main role to
induce the religious community and the public as a whole to accept
liberty of expression for everyone through the written word. With
the steps mentioned above, there is hope to revitalize Egypt’s rich
literary history before it is too late.
Works Cited
“A Call to ‘Reclaim Arab Knowledge’.” Amman, Jordan: United Nations
Development Programme, 2003.
Al-Kharrat, Eduard. “Concerning Repression, Liberty, and the Affirmation of
the Right To be Different.” For Rushdie: Essays by Arab and Muslim
Writers in Defense of Free Speech. Ed. George Braziller. New York:
George Braziller, Inc. 1994: 32-34.
Cromwell, Thomas. “Letter from Exile.” Middle East Times 21 Sept. 1997.
20 Nov. 2003. <http://metimes.com/cens/38thomed.htm>.
El-Din, Gamal Essan. “Azhar Censorship Zealously Defended.” Al-Ahram
Weekly Online 8-14 June 2000. 1 Nov. 2003. <http://
weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/485/eg3.htm>.
El Saadawi, Nawal. “Defying Submission.” Index On Censorship 19.9 (1990):
16.
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Engel, Richard. “Press Censor Denies Censorship: An Interview with Lutfi
Abdel Kader.” Middle East Times 24 Aug. 1997. 5 Nov. 2003.
<http://www.metimes.com/cens/censor.htm>.
Karolides, Nicholas J., Margaret Bald, and Dawn B. Sova. “The Hidden Face
of Eve.” 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature.
New York Checkmark Books. 1999: 205-208.
— — — . “The Satanic Verses.” 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of
World Literature. New York: Checkmark Books. 1999: 249-257.
Mehrez, Samia. “The Value of Freedom.” Al-Ahram Weekly Online 30 Oct.
2003. 29 Nov. 2003. <http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/662/cu6.htm>.
Najjar, Fauzi M. “Book Banning in Contemporary Egypt.” The Muslim World
91.3 (2001): 399-424.
Rakha, Youssef. “Inquisition Interrupted.” Al-Ahram Weekly Online 18 Sept.
2003. 1 Nov. 2003. <http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/656/cu2.htm>.
Smith, Melissa. Personal Interview. 22 Nov. 2003.
“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” The Fourth R 11.2 (2001): 31,
35.
Egyptian Literary Censorship
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Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
Mariella Brodersen
Writer’s comment: Overcoming language barriers can be both the
best and worst thing about traveling. Although I grew up
trilingually, I have had my fair share of awkward moments when
trying to communicate with others during my vacations. While
language barriers are often a problem for me, it recently crossed
my mind that none of my friends know any languages other than
English. For this reason, I have become increasingly aware of the
lack of foreign language education among my peers and the
advantage in that regard that I have over them, particularly when
traveling. When Professor Holmes assigned a research paper about
a social issue, I knew this was my chance to research present
foreign language education policies and to propose a solution. The
assignment was a great opportunity for me to work with Professor
Holmes in combining my personal thoughts and feelings about this
issue and transforming them into a concrete proposal essay.
— Mariella Brodersen
Instructor’s comment: For the documented research argument in
my spring 2004 RC 220 course, I asked students to identify a
significant societal problem and to propose a solution. Mariella’s
background and academic interests lent themselves to the topic she
selected: foreign language education policies in the U.S. What she
ultimately created is a solid argument for why it is so crucial that
American schools recognize foreign language instruction as being
a fundamental (rather than an “elective”) component of every
student’s education. One specific quality that distinguishes her
essay is the expertise she demonstrates throughout; her sources are
well-chosen and smoothly integrated so that they manage to
support rather than overwhelm her own ideas about the topic. I
teach my students that in many kinds of writing situations,
combining personal experience with scholarly research can be a
strength, and Mariella does an exemplary job of demonstrating
how compelling that fusion can be.
— Devon Christina Holmes, Rhetoric and Composition
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Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
Every day, I ride San Francisco’s public transportation
system, MUNI, to and from the University of San
Francisco. During my forty-minute commute I am
immersed in a miniature mobile portrait of the city’s multicultural
diversity. Heading toward the campus of USF, one of the most
diverse schools in the nation, I realize that the environment on the
bus is not so different from the environment at school. In both
areas I am exposed to various encounters with people from
different backgrounds, both in race and ethnicity. However,
between the two, it is only on MUNI that I am faced with language
barriers.
Although the de facto official language in the United States is
English, it is evident that English is not the only language spoken
here. Alongside the growth of the United States as a “melting pot”
of various languages, cultures, and ethnicities, language barriers
are becoming more and more of a societal issue. While the U.S.
has created numerous programs for migrants to learn English as a
second language, there has been little or no emphasis on educating
citizens in languages other than English. As a result, there is a great
need for educational policies that counterbalance the growth of
multicultural diversity in the United States. Lack of significant
attention to this problem and the subsequent efforts put into
existing programs has led to the decline of foreign language
proficiency. Therefore, proposing the establishment of a national
foreign language education policy (FLEP) should be required in
school curricula to embrace the study of foreign languages,
beginning in early childhood, as a necessary component of a
balanced education. In doing so, language barriers would diminish,
benefiting society and the multicultural community as a whole.
In a nation where diversity is now more common than ever,
one would assume that there would be an increased interest in the
accommodation of differences. In actuality, motivation to learn a
second language is minimal (Sandrock, 2002). Considering the
struggle many students have with English grammar skills alone,
learning a second language is usually a result of necessity rather
than interest. For example, it is only because of graduation
requirements that many high school students bother to study a
foreign language. Other than this, the likelihood of an individual
WRW - 22
Mariella Brodersen
picking up a foreign text would be the result of preparation for an
upcoming vacation, and even this is only a temporary strategy for
dissolving language boundaries.
While most schools deem it important to require students to
study a foreign language for a year of more in high school, the
truth is that the system is not universal. Over ten years ago, in
1993, policies were put in place to make foreign language
education accessible to all; however, the programs have resulted in
little or no change (Met, 2003):
Only about 25% of public elementary schools offer the option of FL study
to some or all of their students, compared with 65% of suburban private
schools. In middle schools that offer FL courses, only 51% of public
schools report enrolling half or more of the school’s students; in private,
secular middle schools, 78% report that more than half their students are
taking a year-long course. In 1997, 90% of U.S. high schools offered a
foreign language, down from 95% in 1987. (591)
Lack of interest, lack of funds, and administrative pressure have
allowed for the decrease in availability of a substantial foreign
language education. Consequently, the few students, if any, who
were interested in learning another language have now been cut off
from resources, leaving them and other students at a greater
disadvantage than before.
Unfortunately, the ability and tremendous opportunity for
children, apart from high school students, to learn foreign
languages has been neglected. “Research tells us that childhood is
the perfect time to begin the study of languages: […] at no other
time in our lives are we more adapted to create those valuable
synapses in the brain that support language acquisition” (Kelly et
al., 2002). Children, like sponges, soak up every bit of information
thrown in their direction. “Experts agree that children age 10 or
younger have a special ability to learn new languages. Not only do
children learn faster, but after they are exposed to a foreign
language they are also better able to learn additional languages
later in life” (Hollis, 1998). To deprive children of an education
that prepares them for the diverse and multicultural world that
awaits them is disconcerting. Equally upsetting is how society, as a
result of ignorance toward the study of a foreign language, so
WRW - 23
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
willingly accepts being denied the ability to create meaningful
intercultural relationships.
For a country, as compared to others, that claims to be
progressive as far as technology, business, and the like, I find the
lack of foreign language education in the United States disturbing.
Considering that the future of international relations lies in the
hands of our youth, it would seem logical to emphasize the
welcoming of languages, culture, and diversity in their education.
In Germany, for example, I have three younger half brothers who
are currently learning English in their schools. The youngest is
presently in fifth grade, and alongside his day-to-day German
grammar courses, he has been studying English as well. In the
German public school system, English lessons begin mandatorily
in the fifth grade and proceed through high school. Upon entering
the eighth grade, all students are required to pick up another
foreign language to study throughout their high school careers. So,
on top of studying English and German grammar, my two younger
brothers have taken up yet another foreign language: French.
Therefore, the oldest of the three, who is in tenth grade, has
already been studying English for the past six years, and he is
currently finishing his third year in French. As the clock ticks and
policy makers continue to formulate plans on how best to
encourage students here in the United States to study at least one
foreign language, my younger brother gets closer and closer to
graduating with fluency in not one, but two, foreign languages.
The German model I’ve just described could certainly serve as an
example from which the United States could learn.
One of the major reasons foreign language education policies
in American schools have received little or no attention is a result
of administrative concern about the attention appropriated for basic
skills (Bruce, 2002; Kelly et al., 2002; Met, 2003). There is
legitimate concern that foreign language programs will take away
time that has been primarily allocated to the teaching and
development of elementary skills in reading, writing, and
arithmetic. Although this concern is warranted, there are ways to
satisfy all parties. Illustrating this agreement is a recent study that
offers insight toward the utility of learning a foreign language
while simultaneously giving further attention to other subjects
WRW - 24
(Kelly et al., 2002). Over a period of four years, two professors at
the University of Idaho, with assistance from an elementary school
teacher and principal, explored the results of a University of Idaho
Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES) pilot program
at a nearby elementary school. Kelly et al., 2002), successfully
created an FLES lesson for fifth graders that combines
mathematics and the automation of basic number facts with
Spanish. While there was initial concern that this integration would
decrease the “instructional time” needed for other subjects, the
program proves that both can be accomplished simultaneously. As
a result, students have left with an increased enthusiasm for
learning Spanish, alongside an understanding of mathematics
equivalent to, if not better than, what they would have walked
away with from the start (Kelly et al., 2002).
In light of the issue at hand, I propose that the United States
establish a mandatory and permanent set of foreign language
education policies that begin at the elementary school level.
Because “the authority to make LEPs resides primarily with the
states” (Met, 2003), my proposal relies heavily on a call for action
from each individual state. For the implementation of such policies
to be a success, it is essential for each state to enact policies that
facilitate the learning of foreign languages in a manner that
corresponds with the emphasis currently placed on other subjects. I
am not suggesting that each state impose a series of requirements
on top of what is already a demanding curriculum; rather, I am
proposing that each state recognize the need for foreign languages
to be incorporated into the education of our youth. Currently, the
federal No Child Left Behind Act tests students in reading and
mathematics; consequently, districts have withheld foreign
language programs from elementary schools so as to comply with
other subject requirements (Jacobson, 2004). Therefore, as part of
my proposal, I am suggesting that the No Child Left Behind Act be
restructured in a format that includes all aspects of education,
mandating the study of a foreign language along with the
development of reading skills and mathematics concepts.
While the implementation of foreign language education
policies in elementary schools is an immediate step in the right
direction, the success of my proposal lies most heavily in the hands
Mariella Brodersen
WRW - 25
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
of students, parents, and administrators. One of the biggest
challenges is convincing administrators and policy makers that
learning a foreign language is important (Met, 2003). Equally
critical is
our ability to produce students with the levels of proficiency needed. [It
will be a challenge because] most of these policy makers have achieved
political or professional success without FL proficiency; furthermore, most
have studied a language in school and do not believe the schools capable of
producing proficient language users. (Met 2003)
Hence, action must take place on a grassroots level among
communities that desire change. Interest in the study of diverse
languages must first be emphasized and noticed among groups,
namely the students and parents, before it can rise toward a state
and national level. Because children can only vote with their feet,
getting them to want to move is also an obstacle. Therefore, in
order to stimulate action, motivation must be instilled.
While extrinsic motivations, such as mandated policies and
graduation requirements, have certainly brought interest toward the
study of foreign languages, motivating students intrinsically is the
best way to establish the placement of foreign language programs
into school curriculums (Sandrock, 2002). By providing a set of
language programs that are both interesting and stimulating at an
elementary level, I believe, as does Sandrock (2002), that an
attraction can be created between students and foreign languages.
By creating intrinsic motivation toward the study of a foreign
language that comes directly from the student at an early age, a
desire to succeed in this study will continue for a number of years.
Thus, rather than relying on a few years of dedication to a
language that is merely satisfying a graduation requirement, the
focus will be shifted toward immersing children in foreign
language programs that create desires toward furthering those
studies. “Moreover, children who learn a second language show
stronger problem-solving and analytical skills as they progress
through school” (Hollis, 1998). In the end, children are not just
benefiting in their own personal education, but they will be
contributing to the foundation of a more culturally aware society as
well.
WRW - 26
Mariella Brodersen
With the significant contributions of technological
advancements in recent years, I feel that, compared to before, the
study of foreign languages can be acquired with much greater ease.
In 1998, a software program was designed for children ages 6 and
up that encouraged “a fun and engaging way to learn Spanish,
French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hebrew, Japanese, Mandarin
Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, [and] English” (Hollis, 1998). By
engaging animated characters who only speak the target language,
children are led through games, puzzles, and songs, participating in
computer exercises that challenge them to develop analytical and
problem solving skills (Hollis, 1998). Beginning with the alphabet,
the program “quickly advances to include a wide variety of
vocabulary words in the new language, such as clothing, school
supplies, food, colors, and more” (Hollis, 1998). Incorporating
such programs into elementary school curriculums has
innumerable benefits. One major advantage, for example, is that
the worries that many administrators have about finding teachers to
fill these positions are erased almost completely. Because the
program is a “teacher” in and of itself, no extra salaries are paid,
nor must administrators go through the hassle of hiring an
extended faculty.
Progress will only occur once foreign languages stop being
advocated as electives in our educational curriculums (Bruce,
2002). Although there have been recent initiatives that include the
FLE Improvement Amendments of 1999, the Foreign Language
Assistance, Title X, Part 1: Educational Excellence for All
Children Act of 1999 (McClendon, 2000), and Goals 2000:
Educate America Act (Kelly et al., 2002), language learning
remains neglected in terms of the education of our youth. It is in
the nation’s best interest to incorporate foreign language into the
basic curriculum, and I suggest that the matter be carefully
emphasized. Like Bruce (2002), I propose that businesses and
industries create a greater emphasis on “language proficient
graduates,” in hopes of creating a system that relies heavily on the
knowledge of at least two languages. Not only would the
knowledge of two languages “give a strong boost to a career; it
[would] also enrich school experiences and promote cultural
awareness and sensitivity” (Kelly et al., 2002).
WRW - 27
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
Although I have had the great privilege of growing up in a
trilingual home, I realize that there is a whole world of language
barriers I have yet to encounter. Since moving to San Francisco,
what with my morning and afternoon commute on MUNI, I have
developed a greater appreciation of and interest in cultural
diversity; yet at times I feel that perhaps I am the only one who
enjoys listening to a man sing along to his walkman in French,
while sitting next to a woman who prays in Portuguese, and
watching a mother whisper to her child in Japanese. Maybe my
interest is a result of having grown up in the suburbs, and I have
yet to accustom myself to the wide array of people who inhabit a
city. But it is for this same exact reason that I feel that all children
should grow up with a desire for cultural awareness and language
diversity, regardless of whether or not the children will be faced
with diversity as they are growing up. Children will inevitably
reach an age when they will leave their homes, and if our
education nationwide prepares these children at an early enough
age, they will enter the “real world” with an abundance of potential
and multicultural sensitivity. As a communications major, it is
important to me to continue my studies in foreign languages so as
to facilitate future relations. Equally important is my desire for
future generations to have the same, if not better, language
privileges as I had in my childhood. Because there are many
people who would love to be in my position, I feel it is necessary
to provide all children with this opportunity. Mandating foreign
language education policies into our curriculum is essential and
can only yield positive results. As Mimi Met (2003) says it in what,
I believe, is the most crucial point of all: “If we do not do it for
ourselves we cannot blame others for doing less.”
References
Bruce, A. (2002). Encouraging the growth of foreign language study. The Modern
Language Journal, 86, 605-609.
Jacobson, L. (2004). Preschoolers study foreign tongues. Education Week, 23, 1-
3.
WRW - 28
Mariella Brodersen
Hollis, N.H. (1998). New KidSpeak foreign language education software gives
young learners a valuable head start in 11 languages. Business Wire, 7-10.
Kelly, G.N., Kennedy, T.J., Eberhardt, M.B., & Austin, L.K. (2002). Learning
Spanish while practicing mathematics concepts and skills: A winning
combination. Teaching Children Mathematics, 9, 141-147.
McCleadon, L. (2000). Middle school foreign language programs: Excellence for
all students in 2000 and beyond. NAASP Bulletin, 19-25.
Met, M. (2003). Developing language education policies for our schools. The
Modern Language Journal, 87, 589-592.
Sandrock, P. (2002). Creating intrinsic motivation to learn world languages. The
Modern Language Journal, 86, 610-612.
WRW - 29
Writer’s comment: The purpose of this paper is to shed light on
U.S. hypocrisy regarding relations with foreign leaders and
nations. Throughout its history, the U.S. has supported and
installed some of the most brutal dictators. However, American
leaders claim that they will not lift the Cuban embargo because of
Castro’s human rights record. The truth is that American leaders
are willing to support any leader who supports U.S. economic
interests. American hatred for Castro has nothing to do with
human rights but stems from his unwillingness to blindly support
the positions and actions of the U.S. American leaders claim that
the embargo is meant to “protect the freedom of the Cuban
people,” but these leaders never mention that Cubans suffer due to
this blockade. This embargo was never instituted to protect human
rights; rather, it is a tool of retribution against a man who has
steadfastly refused to allow U.S. greed to subjugate his people.
— Nicholas Miller
Instructor’s comment: When assigning the final paper for my
autumn 2003 class on the American Presidency, I did something
that typically leads students into either a state of frenzy or
paralysis: I told them to write about anything they wanted, so long
as it had to do with an American president. Eventually, the
majority of my students had to have a topic assigned to them,
whereas Nicholas Miller knew right away what he wanted to
research: the Cuban embargo. The topic is a good marriage of
presidential history and current electoral politics, and Nicholas
skillfully weaves the relevant facts about the long-standing policy
along with arguments from both sides of the political spectrum. As
a former political aide, I noticed right away that his paper goes
beyond a typical assignment and does what any stellar policy
memo should do: educate and persuade. Nicholas’s paper does
both, and I find it both enlightening and enlightened.
— Masaki Hidaka, Politics
The Cuban Embargo: An Antiquated
Measure that has Failed Cuba and Failed
the U.S.
Nicholas Miller
WRW - 30
Nicholas Miller
Throughout its history, the United States has adopted no law
that has been more useless than the Cuban embargo. The
embargo, put in place by President Kennedy in 1962, bans
all imports of Cuban goods to the United States and bars all
Americans from traveling to Cuba without special permission from
the United States government. The decision to impose the
embargo was correct in 1962, during the height of the Cuban
Missile Crisis. However, as soon as the crisis subsided, the
embargo should have been lifted. In the aftermath of the missile
crisis, embargo proponents have argued that the embargo is
necessary in order to force Cuban President Fidel Castro to adopt
democratic reforms. After more than forty years on the books, it is
abundantly clear that the embargo has done nothing to bring
democracy to Cuba. Instead, it has deprived the Cuban people of
vital economic and medicinal resources, it has allowed Castro to
blame all of Cuba’s problems on the U.S. embargo, and it has
deprived American citizens of their fundamental right to travel
where they choose. The U.S. embargo has failed our country, it
has failed our citizens, and it continues to fail the men, women,
and children in Cuba who are forced to fight poverty on a daily
basis. People around the world know that the U.S. is always
reluctant to admit that it has failed. However, for the sake of the
thousands of people who suffer under the embargo every day, U.S.
leaders must end a trade blockade that has punished innocent
people simply for the ostensible “crime” of being poor.
As mentioned above, the U.S. embargo was put in place by
President Kennedy in the aftermath of the 1962 Cuban Missile
Crisis. When Castro came to power in 1959 as a Communist, his
government began to receive large amounts of financial support
from the Soviet Union. Beginning in January of 1962, Russia
began shipping medium range nuclear missiles to Cuba, which
Castro aimed at the shores of Florida. President Kennedy
immediately objected to nuclear weapons being pointed at the
United States by Castro. He called for a naval blockade of Cuba to
prevent the Soviet Union from delivering any more missiles to
Cuba. There was an intense stand-off between Russia and the U.S.
but in the end Russia agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba.
Kennedy’s anger at Castro for pointing nuclear weapons at the U.S.
WRW - 31
The Cuban Embargo
led him to sign the Cuban embargo on March 23rd 1962, banning
“all trade with Cuba as well as imports of all goods made from or
containing Cuban materials, even if made in other countries.”1
Kennedy was entirely justified in instituting the Cuban embargo.
The U.S. had a right to cut off trade with a nation that was pointing
nuclear weapons at America’s shores. However, as soon as the
missiles were removed, the embargo should have been rescinded.
When the missiles came down, Cuba no longer posed any threat to
the U.S. or its citizens. However, hard liners within the United
States argued that Castro was a tyrant who posed a national
security threat to the United States. Embargo supporters argued
that Cuba was still receiving financial benefits from the Soviet
Union and therefore should be viewed as a potential threat to
America. As a result of American hatred of communism, the
embargo remained in place on the grounds of national security.
In 1989 the Soviet Union collapsed, which forced its leaders to
cut off financial support to Cuba. This decision caused Cuba and
its people to slip deeper into poverty. Opponents of the embargo
argued that Cuba was now a poor third-world country and no
longer posed any threat to U.S. national security. Despite this fact,
the United States strengthened the embargo on grounds that
America would not support a government that had no respect for
human rights. America’s demand that Castro respect democracy
and allow citizens to speak out against the government represented
American hypocrisy at its worst, since the U.S. has supported some
of the most violent and oppressive regimes in world history.
Before Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, Cuba was controlled by
a brutal dictator named Fulgencio Batista. Batista ruled Cuba
through fear, torture, and murder. He murdered men, women, and
children on national television for speaking out against the
government. Despite these horrific violations of human rights,
Batista was adored by the United States because he wholeheartedly
supported American economic interests in Cuba. In addition to
Batista, the U.S. has supported numerous dictatorships that have
had horrific human rights records: “Clearly, Cuban-style
democracy wouldn’t qualify as ‘free’ by most definitions. Yet
other nations with far worse human-rights records, including
Guatemala, China, Chile, and Indonesia, have received U.S.
WRW - 32
economic and political support despite their atrocities.”2 Another
quotation that reinforces American hypocrisy on this subject is as
follows: “United States-backed governments, especially in Latin
America, are notorious for abusive dictatorships, far contrary to
American doublespeak of supporting freedom and democracy.
One needs only to look at the notorious School of the Americas,
which trains and sends Latin American soldiers into countries like
El Salvador to massacre their own people to maintain U.S.
interests.”3 These two quotations illustrate that on the issue of
human rights, the U.S. speaks out of both sides of its mouth. The
U.S.’s unflinching support of leaders with deplorable human rights
records illustrates that America does not care about freedom or
democracy as long as the leader in question supports U.S. interests.
As a result of U.S. support of repressive regimes around the world,
its pretense to piety in the case of Cuba is seen as nothing more
than a hypocritical double standard brought on by the fact that
America does not like Fidel Castro.
One of the strongest arguments made in favor of the embargo
by its proponents is that Castro has done nothing positive for the
Cuban people. While U.S. leaders can point to a lack of civil and
political rights to support this argument, they are forced to admit
that Cuban citizens have more economic and social rights than
ordinary citizens in the United States and that in several ways
communism has been good for the Cuban people: “The infant
mortality rate in Cuba is one of the lowest in the world (12 per
1,000 live births). Life expectancy in Cuba far exceeds that in the
rest of Latin America (73.5 years as opposed to, for example, 64.3
years in Ecuador). The illiteracy rate has declined from 25 percent
of the population before the revolution (mid-’50s) to 4 percent in
the mid-’90s. It is important to note that all this was achieved
without the support of the U.S., the World Bank, or the
International Monetary Fund…Cuban Farm Workers now have
access to potable water, decent housing, education, and health care
at a rate almost unparalleled in the rest of Latin America.”4 This
quotation illustrates that Castro has introduced social and
economic rights that even the U.S. does not provide its citizens. In
her article entitled “Time to End Cuban Embargo,” Natalya Efros
of Princeton University sheds even greater light on the social
Nicholas Miller
WRW - 33
The Cuban Embargo
advances made in Cuba under Castro. She writes, “How can the
U.S., with its own long list of human rights violations, point a
finger at a government that has transformed a third-world country
with a history of poverty and gross economic inequalities into a
state where everyone has a standard of living above the poverty
level, an accomplishment we (the U.S.) have not yet achieved?
Although its own human rights record is far from clean, Cuba has
taken great strides in eliminating sexism and apartheid-like racism,
it has implemented universal healthcare and prescription drug
systems that put us to shame, and its education system is the best in
Latin America.”5 Efros’ remarks provide further evidence that all
of the American propaganda stating that Castro has done nothing
for his people is categorically untrue. If anything, U.S. leaders are
probably embarrassed by all that Castro has accomplished because
America has failed where he has succeeded. Reading of these
achievements forces us to wonder how much Castro and the Cuban
people could accomplish if the United States was providing the
Cuban people with greater resources to succeed. How much is the
U.S. suppressing Cuba’s potential by robbing it of vital resources?
The final argument used by advocates of the Cuban embargo is
that the blockade is going to make Cuba so economically desperate
that Castro will be forced to adopt democratic reforms. However,
this belief has been rejected by over forty years of evidence. Since
the embargo was put in place, Castro has not adopted one
diplomatic reform. He has not allowed free elections, he has
cracked down on political dissent, and he has increased
government censorship. There is no evidence to suggest that
Castro will adopt reforms now, considering that for the past forty
years he has not adopted even one. Instead of forcing Castro to
open up Cuba to democracy, the embargo has merely caused the
Cuban people to sink deeper into debt and has allowed Castro to
blame all of Cuba’s problems on the U.S. and the embargo. What
is perhaps most ironic is that while U.S. leaders condemn Castro
for his blatant disregard for freedom and law, the U.S. is breaking
the law every day by keeping the embargo in place: “Restricting
the exportation and sale of medicine and food is a violation of
international humanitarian law and has been condemned by almost
every international body, including [the] Organization of American
WRW - 34
States, which normally backs U.S. policies. The United States is
alone in its hard-line attack of the Cuban people. No other country
honors the restrictions set by the US, and in 1997, the European
Union went so far as to bring up charges against the US for
violating WTO rules.”6 Following the law, it would seem, is yet
another instance of the U.S. having a double standard. American
leaders take offense when Fidel Castro does not respect the U.S.’s
definition of right and wrong, but these same leaders openly and
willingly disobey and disrespect international law when it suits
U.S. interest. The Organization of the American States is not the
only international organization that has condemned the U.S.
embargo against Cuba: “On November 7, 1997 the UN approved
its sixth consecutive resolution against the blockade. There were
143 nations in favor of lifting the blockade, 3 against, and 17
abstentions.”7 This quotation illustrates that in the case of Cuba,
the U.S. is willing to make a mockery of international law and
expectations. The international community can only hope that one
day, U.S. leaders will begin to respect the Cuban people’s welfare
enough that they abandon a policy that has been counter-effective
on so many fronts.
Throughout recent years, the U.S. has seen the emergence of a
strong group in America advocating the repeal of the Cuban
embargo. In May of 2002, a bipartisan group of forty-eight former
members of the U.S. Senate sent an open letter to President Bush
and Congress arguing that the embargo should be ended: “Our
policy makes no sense. It’s hurting the people of Cuba and taking
jobs away from the United States. Meanwhile, it fails to bring any
change in Cuba…This policy once may have made sense but no
longer serves the purposes for which it was imposed. The interests
of the Cuban people would best be served by an American
presence”8. This statement is not only important due to its content,
but is also very important because it was written and signed by
forty-eight Democrats and Republicans who used to serve in one of
the highest bodies of American government. Present politicians
should take their former colleagues’ words to heart in deciding
whether to continue a policy that has negatively affected countless
innocent people.
The Cuban embargo was a policy put in place at a specific time
Nicholas Miller
WRW - 35
The Cuban Embargo
to serve a specific purpose. President Kennedy believed that it was
a legitimate response to a dictator who posed a nuclear threat to
this country. However, the embargo served its purpose. The
missiles came down, and the embargo should have fallen then as
well. Instead of being reversed, the embargo has stayed in place
for forty years, crippling the Cuban economy and inflicting a
crushing blow on the Cuban people. Embargo proponents argue
that Castro does not respect democracy and therefore the U.S.
should not support his regime. However, U.S. aided countless
regimes with far worse human rights records than that of Cuba
under Fidel Castro. As such, the Cuban embargo represents a
double standard in American foreign policy. The U.S. will aid any
country that caters to American interests no matter what their
actions or positions on human rights. However, if a foreign leader
has the courage to stand up to American imperialism, the U.S. will
use every tool in its arsenal to destroy that leader’s country and
citizens. The Cuban people have accomplished so much despite
enduring a forty year blockade by the world’s most powerful
country. The embargo and its proponents are denying ordinary
Cubans a greater opportunity to better themselves through
normalized trade relations. The embargo must be reversed as soon
as possible for the benefit of both America and Cuba. Only when
the embargo is ended will the U.S. be able to state that it respects
and values not only Cubans, but the sanctity of all human life.
Footnotes
1 http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/funfacts/embargo.htm
2 http://www.yaleherald.com/archive/xxvii/1999.01.22/opinion/p10remer.html
3 http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2002/09/12/opinion/5279.shtml
4 http://www.yaleherald.com/archive/xxvii/1999.01.22/opinion/p10remer.html
5 http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2002/09/12/opinion/5279.shtml
6 http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2002/09/12/opinion/5279.shtml
7 http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/Cuba/other.html
8 http://www.cubafoundation.org/Releases/
Former%20Senators%20Oppose%20Cuban%20...
WRW - 36
The Sand Crab
Perrine Sarchet
Writer’s comment: “The Sand Crab” is about my younger brother,
Ty. When I wrote it, Ty was applying to college; I could only
imagine the experiences waiting for him in the very near future.
The idea of my baby “Sand Crab” brother growing up was a
subject so emotional and so moving that I felt the need to write
about it. This piece emerged from Brian Komei Dempster’s
Writing Seminar I as part of our creative nonfiction unit. I want to
stress, especially to Ty and my family, that creative nonfiction is
exactly that: creative. And although these experiences really did
happen, they are just seen through my own personal lens. I thank
Brian so much for helping me to “re-envision” the piece, to bring
“The Sand Crab” to life, to articulate what was screaming to be
said.
—Perrine Sarchet
Instructor’s comment: This piece began as a short response in
which Perrine created a character sketch of a family member. Her
piece evolved into a rich portrait of the complicated relationship
between she and her brother. Using water as a symbol, Perrine
pays homage to her family history, enacting the intimacy and
distance she and Ty experience as they grow up. I admire the
travel through time and place, the poetry in the language. And
while the piece is breathtaking in its evocation of Hawaii’s
landscape, it contains a depth that goes far beyond its “sparkling
surface”: a song about the bittersweet nature of memory, the gaps
between nostalgia and reality, the intricate nuances of sibling love.
—Brian Komei Dempster, Rhetoric and Composition
WRW - 37
It is raining in San Francisco today. As I sit at my desk, I can
barely make out the tall, spiky spire of City Hall and the
glowing embers of the streetlights outside. When it rains here,
it seems like everything—the city, the school, and the mood I’m
in—is shrouded in a damp, misty grayness that extinguishes all the
warmth around me. On days like this one, I really miss home. I
think of the beating sun, the lively beach, my laughing friends, my
big golden dog, and my little brother, all with a longing that causes
me to shiver in this cold, dim dorm room and miserably jerk the
rattling window shut.
On days like this one, I miss even the rain in Hawaii. The
winter there is drowned by sudden and furious downpours that are
so different from this constant frigid mist that penetrates San
Francisco for weeks on end. Winter rain in Hawaii is violent and
torrential, usually only attacking at night, for only a matter of a few
intense hours, and then retreating, leaving behind green dewy
mountainsides and shiny clean cars. When I think of rain like that,
angry, intense rain, I am always reminded of my brother. I sit here,
hugging my fleece blanket close around me, and I think of him and
my first experience of Hawaii’s violent rain.
We were both in grade school, young enough to be completely
unconcerned with looking cool and still very anxious about being
yelled at by mom. We had just eaten one of her experimental
dinners, which back then largely consisted of some breaded meat
substance, rice, kim chee and creamed corn on the side. She used
to buy canned creamed corn as if she were stockpiling for a
hurricane, and that night the storm outside nearly felt like one.
While we slowly prodded our food, we could hear the roar of
the rain outside as it bore down in angry waves, pelting our
seemingly impenetrable house. Large, stinging droplets smacked
the sliding glass door to the dining room. Warmly sheltered inside,
we stared into the glass at the bubbly, warped reflections of our
warm, dry selves.
My brother, after hastily sliding his barely eaten dinner off his
plate and into the trash, flung open the glass door and was blasted
by the cool night air. He stepped out onto the patio and flicked on
the blinking fluorescent overhead light, exposing our dog Sheba, a
blond retriever mix, huddled in a decrepit, brown, fur-covered
The Sand Crab
WRW - 38
velveteen easy chair. I followed him out into the chilly damp air
and we both hugged Sheba and felt her warmth all balled up in the
depths of the dusty old chair. Now he had caught the contagious
energy of the rain and gave it back to me. We tiptoed over the cold
cement and inspected the rain gutter, which was shooting out water
and debris like a fire hose. We washed our feet in its shocking
coolness as the rain bore down over our sleepy little valley and
made a marsh of our backyard.
I can’t remember why or how it happened, but our numb, wet
feet inspired us to jump in and out of the waterfall that was rushing
from the gutter on the corner of the roof. Soon we were mock-showering,
fully-clothed, in the rain gutter’s spew, taking turns—
one of us shivering under the smacking droplets as the other
danced spastically under the stream of rainwater. We laughed
maniacally, as if we were alive in nature for the very first time. The
rain was the coldest we’d ever felt. The grass glistened blackish-green
in the cool, blue darkness. Our feet sunk sumptuously into
the new mud. We took turns wondering, “Haha, where’s mom?
She’s going to be mad at uuuusss!”
When we looked back at our mom, who watched in disbelief
from the doorway, it suddenly seemed as if we were out there
forever, way past the point when she should have told us, “Get
your butts back in the house!” Of course, she eventually did, but
she mercifully waited until after the rain had died down, and the
gutter was downgraded from a raging waterfall to a trickling
stream. Mom wrapped the two of us in towels, and we shivered our
way back into the glowing warmth of the dining room, leaving
Sheba to fend off the rain herself. I wiped my fogged tortoise-shell-
framed glasses and wriggled uncomfortably in my scratchy
drenched polo shirt and soaking Bermuda shorts. My brother
quickly stripped down naked in the living room and bolted for the
warmth of the shower.
I sit here now and wonder if this night washes over him, as it
does over me. Does he think of me during those torrential
downpours now? It seems so long ago, but I still feel that if I went
home tomorrow, it could happen again without a second thought.
Thinking of him causes me to look at the picture of us that sits on
my desk, as I often do when I feel homesick. He was probably
Perrine Sarchet
WRW - 39
three when it was taken, and I about five—we are standing side by
side on a rocky beach, our backs to the camera. It looks to me now
that I was showing him the water, guiding him toward it, but
protecting him from it at the same time. Kind of like he did with
me a few years later in the rain. In the picture, I am carrying a
yellow bucket in one hand, holding his hand with the other. Both
his fists are in balls.
When my brother was little he would not venture into the
ocean past his waist. Instead, he sat on the sand burying my mom
and wearing his fluorescent green elastic-waist shorts with the
mesh lining that always poked out, so my mom nicknamed him
“Sand Crab.” His real name is Ty, after no one in particular. But
when he was in little league, with his tiny chin jutting out from the
broad bill of his cap, he would insist that he was named after Ty
Cobb, incredible fielder and legendary asshole. My brother revered
Cobb’s skill on the diamond and his attitude toward life and other
players. He wanted to spike the catcher as he was sliding home. He
wanted to glower in the pitcher’s face and then smack one out of
the park. He wanted to live boldly and aggressively without
wondering if people liked him or not.
Sometimes now, when he deftly guns a guy out at third base or
calls my mom “a dumb-ass” to her face, I wonder if he really did
live up to his namesake’s legend. I recall how afraid we were of
getting in trouble for dancing in the rain that night and can see how
much has changed. My mom often calls me from home,
distraughtly trying to make sense of my brother, trying to figure
out the best way to handle him when he comes back hours past his
curfew, or swears at my stepfather, or screams at his ex-girlfriend
over the phone. She relays snippets of what he says to her, “Shut
up, mom, just leave me alone.” To my stepfather, “I don’t have to
fucking listen to you.” Or to his girlfriend, “No, no, please, don’t
hang up!”
I can understand his anger, his hurt. I can tell what reaction he
is trying to get from her, from me, from everyone. I know that
unlike me, he only lets his emotions show when he wants them to.
I know that he is a smooth lake one minute, the next, a crashing
tsunami. His fury and emotion are a bigger, louder reflection of my
own. I try to explain these things to my mom, try to explain where
The Sand Crab
WRW - 40
he is coming from and where he is going, but she can’t see it. She
only hears the angry swear words. Sees his red, crying face. And
worries. I guess she doesn’t understand because although she was
there right behind us, she was standing in the doorway while we
danced in the rain. I guess that for her, it’s not like looking into the
slightly warped mirror where the rain fell, or the glass frame of this
photo, now collecting dust. Looking at the picture on my desk,
though things are so different now, I find it not hard to believe that
he was once this tiny blond-headed Ty, standing firm-footed next
to his sister, a safe distance away from the water. But he is not
afraid of the ocean anymore.
I remember us as 9 and 10-year-olds, going to the beach on the
North Shore during our summer vacation. It was always an all-day
adventure to travel there, a whole hour away from our side of the
tiny island. We would pack coolers, big bags of beach necessities,
changes of clothes, and would always be sound asleep in the
backseat by the time we made it to the beach. During the summer,
we would always go to the same spot, Waimea Bay, a beach
famous for crushing waves and rocks high enough to make your
stomach swoop as you leapt from them. I was always wary of the
strong current at Waimea and the steep shelf that was hidden under
the flat, sparkling surface. The shelf was made by the massive
winter waves that came and sucked out all the sand. I would only
cautiously venture a few feet off shore and snorkel around with the
tiny silver fish, chasing them as they darted in all directions. But
when I felt the current pulling at my fins and the cold water
rushing around my legs, I knew that I was not strong enough to
venture that far and came in.
One day, Ty, the Sand Crab, was no longer sitting on the shore.
As I squinted in the blazing sun I could see that he was climbing a
large pile of lava rock that jutted out into deep water of the bay.
He was steadily making his way past throngs of tall, tanned locals,
draped on different perches on the way up to the peak. I saw him
at the top of the rock pile and my stomach swooped as I watched
his skinny, erect body plunge smoothly into the dark blue ocean. I
held my breath for him, as if me holding my breath would show
him what to do in the chilly, blue underwater depths, so deep that
his toes could never stretch to scrape the bottom. But as I saw his
Perrine Sarchet
WRW - 41
wet, seal-like head break the surface, I knew that I was more afraid
for him than he was for himself. That day, I realized that my
brother, while sitting on the sand, was not content to be the Sand
Crab while his big sister was a little fish in the big ocean. He used
that time spent sitting there to prepare himself and when he was
ready, there were no small steps into shallow waters, only one
giant plunge with no looking back. I know now that this is
probably how it always will be. And that I can only sit on the
shore, holding my breath as I wait to see what new depths and
experiences he will discover.
And although Ty has gotten taller, I feel that my little brother
has grown much more in depth than in height. He is delving into
uncharted waters. He is on his way to college, he is suffering from
a broken heart, he is saying goodbye to home, he is trying to work
out how he will still play ball four years from now. He is getting
old. Or rather growing up. Though the term growing up always
strikes me as something a tree does, or process that a skyscraper
undergoes, never something that happens to a person over time. I
feel that as he lost his fear of the ocean and his need to hold his
sister’s hand, he took on a sort of ocean-like depth himself and
would never be satisfied just sitting on the sand again.
Sometimes I can’t help but think of him as a shaggy blonde
nine-year-old standing on the pitcher’s mound, biting his nails. I
am not used to hearing him tell some girl, “I’ll never forget what
you did to me.” I am not used to the idea of him in college,
playing baseball, drinking beers. I am not used to him having
newer, cooler, nicknames that I don’t know about. Now that I am
here in San Francisco, so far away from his every move, I need to
remind myself that what he does and what I do will always
remained linked. We will have always swam in the same big bay,
the same torrential downpour, the same uterus.
We have the same parents, the same dry sense of humor, the
same big horse teeth. We went to the same schools, had the same
friends, ate the same meals at the same time each day. Our pasts
are so intimately linked that I know there will be never be anyone
who knows exactly who I am and where I come from better than
him. Maybe that is why I find it so hard to break that sameness,
that identical history now. Maybe that is why it is so hard for me
The Sand Crab
WRW - 42
to think of him as a person of his own, not as my brother, but as a
deep, intense human being, plunging fearlessly into life. Maybe
that is why, as I think of him now and I look at the picture of him
and me on the beach, I have tears in my eyes and can’t stop them
from streaming down my cheeks.
I know we will always be able to laugh at the Simpsons and at
mom together, that we will always gag at the sight of creamed
corn, and that we will always look like slightly different versions
of the same person. I can call him right now and ask him to do his
impression of Police Chief Wiggum and he would without batting
an eye. I also know that my brother and I will take on our own
individual personalities, find our own friends, have our own bad
food experiences, and create our own inside jokes as our nearly
identical histories fork, and we embark into two strikingly different
directions. I can only wonder who we will become, both together
and separately, as we traverse our own unique paths over the next
few years and delve into newer, deeper, less familiar waters, with
the other watching, just a speck on the shore. I am sad to see him
grow up; I don’t even feel ready myself. But I know that no matter
how deeply we go plunging into strange new depths, the other will
be there at the surface to share in the triumph. When I graduate
from college, he will be there with a hug and a lei. When he throws
his first shutout, I will be cheering and screaming, if only over the
phone. When I get married, he will be there smiling proudly,
cheering me on. And whether we are at the highest of highs or the
lowest of lows, the other will be the breath of warm fresh air,
waiting right at the surface. And right now, in my tiny San
Francisco dorm room, this thought makes the rain outside seem
less dreary, and I can smile proudly at my own warped face,
reflected in the window.
Perrine Sarchet
WRW - 43
Writer’s comment: It took me weeks to write this paper—not that
all that time was necessary. It could have been a much more well-written
and introspective essay, I feel, if I hadn’t wasted so much
time. At each turn in my research, I found myself engrossed in the
material. I would go into the periodicals at the library to pull a
copy of Science, and end up sitting down on the floor between the
stacks and reading half the volume. I am fascinated by our relation-ship
with the environment. Given the opportunity, I would have
happily written dozens of pages on climate change alone. Albeit
that this assignment was for Ethics class, it took quite an effort on
my part not to get carried away. I dedicate the following thoughts
to every environmentalist who’s ever been called a “whacko.” I
thoroughly enjoyed getting all these emotions down on paper.
— Connor Narciso
Natural Capital
Connor Narciso
Instructor’s comment: Each semester my Ethics students are
instructed to create a final paper topic from any subject we cover in
the course, from abortion to animal rights. This task is
overwhelming for some; for others, it is simply another creative
and intellectual challenge. Mr. Narciso’s essay is an excellent
example of the latter. His essay presents a reflection on the ideas in
Aldo Leopold’s article, “The Land Ethic,” and Bill Devall and
George Sessions’ article, “Deep Ecology.” Both articles outline the
importance of creating a new set of values relating to the
environment. The movement from anthropocentrism to
ecocentrism depends on the development of a new appreciation for
the land and the natural world. In its introduction, Narciso’s essay
creatively presents the real obstacles that we may face in an
attempt to manifest that appreciation in our lives. He then artfully
introduces not only the predominant issues in the environmental
justice movement, but weaves into his arguments the ideas of
prominent economist, Milton Friedman, and philosophers Leopold
and Mill.
— Katherine Black, Philosophy Department
WRW - 44
Connor Narciso
Earlier this year three friends and I packed our backpacks and
set out on foot, up the coast from Santa Barbara. With no
particular destination in mind, we followed the beaches and
the nearby railroad tracks north until nightfall. After finding a
quiet, secluded beach, we settled down under a large tree and fell
asleep to the hypnotic rhythm of the ocean break. In the morning,
reluctant to retrace the 20 miles we had covered the previous day,
we hiked up to highway 101, and hitched a ride back to Santa
Barbara. Once home and recounting our brief trip with each other,
it struck me how legally irresponsible our innocent hike had been.
Within fifteen minutes of embarking, we were escorted off a large
golf course for trespassing. (There was no convenient way around
it.) Shortly after, several construction workers informed us that it
was illegal to hike on the tracks. We had gone fishing off the cliffs
for our dinner, which was illegal without a license. We built a fire
to cook and stay warm, which is illegal on most California
beaches. And in order to get home, we broke the law one final time
by hitchhiking. Now I suppose, when considered individually, each
of these laws serves legitimate purposes. But in combination with
one another, it’s hard not to feel as if we’re being prevented from
experiencing the world outside of the suburbs.
The truth is that—whether for reasons of legality,
inconvenience, or sheer ignorance—we are losing touch with the
planet from which we came, and on which we all depend. No, it is
not necessary, nor recommended, to spend our lives living in the
woods in order to appreciate nature. But there is a level of respect
that one cannot reach until he or she has placed his or her frail
human body at the mercy of natural phenomena. And it is telling
how many broken laws were necessary to escape conventions
designed to encourage staying home and shopping on the internet.
Today we are faced with looming environmental crises, at a time in
which our urban lives are becoming ever more detached from their
natural roots. Gone are the times when our resources could be
treated as boundless, and our carelessness void of consequences.
And like a delicate food chain, the issue of environmentalism is
hardly a closed system, but interlinked to an array of
circumstances. Because all areas of life depend upon the
environment, it is impossible to approach without considering
WRW - 45
several social, political, and economic factors. The fundamental
changes in environmental ethics that are necessary will require
reconstruction of attitudes in each of theses three areas.
Environmental justice is easy to ignore, because we rarely are
forced to witness its repercussions. But it will not go away, and
without immediate attention, will likely become the most serious
dilemma to ever face humankind.
Civilizations rooted in a deep respect for nature have existed
from time immemorial, though their numbers have dwindled
markedly in recent historical memory. For most ancient tribes,
environmentalism was not a political “issue”; it was a way of life,
an ideology on which routine decisions were based. Humans were
consciously connected to the earth. In a sense, the land was
included in the moral community. The Haida people of the Pacific
Northwest, for example, “refer to whales and ravens as their
‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ and to fish and trees as the finned and tree
people.”1 The social contract cast a much wider net, affording
plants and animals with levels of dignity. The earth was more than
the origin of sustenance, it was worshipped as sacred.
Deep in the heart of nature’s bosom, some native tribes
continue to live according to the ethical codes of their early
predecessors, but the simple lives of generations past have been
rapidly abated by recent accomplishments in production and
technology. The human race has succeeded in overcoming the
perilous, day-by-day struggle against nature in which our ancestors
toiled. Industrialized countries have the capacity to feed, clothe,
and medically treat their inhabitants at levels above and beyond
those of necessity. Granted that not all humans have been afforded
such benefits, many have adjusted to lives of luxury and excess.
We’ve crossed the finish line in the race to prosperity, yet we
continue to sprint faster into the unknown, and our sole source of
natural capital now lies at the mercy of our collective will. This
awkward case of role-reversal, in which the planet lies virtually
defenseless, is a very recent development, one that no species has
ever faced. There are few ethical precedents available to us, and
even fewer which suggest that the quality of human life take a back
seat to environmental justice. However, we appear to be facing a
crossroads at which we must choose between two paths: a new
Natural Capital
WRW - 46
Connor Narciso
breed of environmental ethics, or a crash course with harsh,
unforeseen realities. Awaiting our decision, the fate of the planet
hangs in the balance.
Recently, on a class fieldtrip, young students in Minnesota
happened upon a bizarre discovery. Frogs, toads and salamanders
were found with gruesome deformities, ranging from missing eyes
to additional pairs of legs growing from the stomach. Scientists
immediately began to investigate. The abnormalities were not
isolated, but were eventually recorded in over 60 species, found in
46 states.2 Several possible causes have been identified, including
UV-ray damage, pollution, and parasites. Each potential cause
shares a common root: human activity. We are an “exterminator
species,” as one scientist has put it, and how we live is distorting
and destroying life on our planet.3 The natural forestry we destroy
and the waste and chemicals we inject back into the air, land and
sea are altering the delicate balance of life on earth. National
Geographic magazine reported in February of 1999 that “some
50% of the world’s flora and fauna could be on a path to extinction
within a hundred years. And everything is affected: fish, birds,
insects, plants, and mammals.” Some estimate that 11% of all bird
species are on the brink of extinction. Conservation biologist Stuart
Pimm insists, “It’s not just species on islands or in rain forests or
just birds or big charismatic mammals. It’s everything and it’s
everywhere…It’s a worldwide epidemic of extinctions.” 4 Not
since a meteor slammed into Mexico 65 million years ago has life
been faced with such bleak prospects. And this time our problems
are not hurtling through space somewhere; they’re embedded in
our way of life.
The causes of biodiversity loss are innumerable, and it would
take countless pages to explore them all in detail. Instead, it’s
appropriate that the largest, most irreversible of them be addressed
briefly. Modern global climate change is an emergency not
exclusive to a specific locality, or some species of toad, but for all
life on earth. “Modern climate change is dominated by human
influences,” reports the journal Science, “which are now large
enough to exceed the bounds of natural variability. The main
source of global climate change is human-induced changes in
atmospheric composition.”5 The by-products of energy production
WRW - 47
are primarily responsible for the artificial fluctuations among
greenhouse gasses. The lifeblood of modern energy production is
cheap oil, which is being consumed so rapidly that it will likely
begin to run out within most of our lifetimes. Some of its possible
replacements—coal, natural gas—would continue the risky cycle
of climate change, until they in turn are exhausted. No one is sure
what will happen to the planet as a result.6 The earth now exists in
what scientists call a metastable state: not too hot and not too
cold—thus suitable for life.7 Perturbations in atmospheric makeup
could tip the scales in either direction, with unpredictable effects.
The potential impacts on the biosphere, in the professionally calm
words of Science: “Quite disruptive.”8
How did we reach this point? Among past philosophers and
social thinkers, the possibility of the planet’s demise probably
received precious little attention, and understandably so—the
impact of human activity upon the environment had not yet
reached critical levels. Global population in 1700 was
approximately 600 million. (It has since increased tenfold.)9 The
highly powerful mechanisms of industry were centuries away.
Under these conditions, Adam Smith produced a philosophical
manifesto with lasting impact in the 21st century. He summarizes
his allegiance to the “invisible hand” of the market as follows:
As every individual, therefore, endeavors as much as he can to employ
his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that
industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual
necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great
as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public
interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it…10
The purpose of this essay is not to discredit Smith’s economic
theories. By all indications his theory of individualism has proven
successful in raising the “annual revenue of society” within freely
operating marketplaces. However, the individualism to which he
refers excludes intentions to promote the “public interest.” It is
safe to assume that Smith would have expanded his indifference to
public interest to include indifference to the environment. We no
longer live amidst the perceived natural abundance of the
Natural Capital
WRW - 48
Connor Narciso
eighteenth century. Self-interest may guide us only so far before a
“tragedy of the commons” becomes inevitable.
Smith’s appeals to the virtues of self-interest have been echoed
among his followers, most notably—for his influence upon modern
American economics—Milton Friedman. On issues related to
environmental protection, Friedman extended Smith’s work to its
(il)logical conclusion: that the “market will stop us” from
compromising the health of the planet “through the price
mechanism.”11 Once again it is unnecessary, in Friedman’s opinion,
for the average consumer to even be aware of the potential
consequences of his/her actions upon the environment. Instead, the
market will “place limits on itself,” effectively saving us from
ourselves. Friedman uses oil as an example:
When resources are really limited prices go up, but the price of oil has
gone down and down. Suppose oil became scarce: the price would go
up, and people would start using other energy sources. In a proper
system the market can take care of the problem.12
Only the market hasn’t been taking care of the problem. The
external costs—long term problems unforeseen by short term
market fixes— associated with oil consumption are unaccounted
for, even covered up in some instances. And alternative energy
poses risks equal in potential harm. For example, if coal or natural
gas happened to fill oil’s void, we would remain dependant upon
an environmentally dirty energy source. Meanwhile, climate
change would remain a non-issue for oil companies as they
managed a rapid shift to these substitute fossil fuels.
The obvious problem with Friedman’s argument is that, had
his predictions been accurate, there would currently be no
environmental crisis. The genetically mutated frogs are already
upon us. What is ExxonMobil doing about it? Friedman explains:
“Do corporate executives, providing they stay within the law, have
responsibilities...other than to make as much money for their
stockholders as possible? My answer is, no, they do not.”13 In fact,
ExxonMobil is addressing climate change…by attempting to
discredit its existence. In 2001 the corporation successfully lobbied
for the removal of prominent U.S. climatologist Dr. Robert Watson
from his five year post as the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel
WRW - 49
on Climate Change. Dr. Watson had taken the unfavorable position
of concurring with the National Academy of Sciences that “most
[global] warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to
human activities.”14 Exxon also contributes over a million dollars a
year to organizations who “question global warming,” while
simultaneously refusing to pay damages for the Valdez oil spill of
15 years earlier.15
This trend, in which corporations spend billions of dollars a
year on phony research, is cited by Professor Kristin Shrader
Frechette of the University of Notre Dame as the primary
impediment to environmental justice. Every year scientists receive
funding to conduct legitimate research—research that appears in
scholarly journals such as Science and Nature. Simultaneously,
corporations are spending three times as much to fund their own
directed research.16 Naturally, the research is carried out in such a
manner that the results will assist in the desirability of the
corporation’s product, its detriment to the planet notwithstanding.
The results are distributed by think tanks—also funded by the same
corporations—and appear throughout the media. Full information
is a prerequisite of Friedman’s free-market utopia, but here the
knowledge pool is clearly tainted with the piss of corporate
propaganda.
Realizing that our economic doctrines are incompatible with
global sustainability leads us to question our relationship with the
environment. Unfortunately it is human survival which prompts
the discussion. All too often our rationales for environmental
protection bear a striking resemblance to the selfish theories that
drove us to crisis in the first place. Nature is considered a
commodity, worth protecting only for the sake of our comfort. The
reason, we are told, that the four-legged frogs are so frightening, is
that the embryos of amphibians are unusually fragile, often
reacting easily to unnatural stimuli. The mutations are therefore
considered a precursor to what could potentially develop among
mammals (read humans) in the future.17 Our selfish concerns take
precedence, and the frogs themselves are, apparently, of no
intrinsic worth. This approach to the environment is termed
“anthropocentrism”—viewing nature strictly “in terms of its values
to humans.”18 Aldo Leopold, professor and former U.S. Forest
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Connor Narciso
Service wildlife manager, contends that “a system of conservation
based solely on economic self-interest is hopelessly lopsided. It
tends to ignore, and thus eliminate, many elements in the land
community that lack commercial value…but are essential to its
healthy functioning.”19 Under the supervision of outdated,
Friedman-esque policies, nature exists as natural capital, a resource
at our disposal. And even if, in accordance with Friedman’s claims
and against all odds, the market were able to miraculously avert
impending danger and preserve the delicate order of the
environment, there’s still something missing. Nature deserves
more.
Environmental justice is not reached simply through the
absence of harm, but rather through the presence of moral
intentions. The theory of “ecocentrism” achieves this goal.
Ecocentrism places humans in concert with, not in domination
over, the earth.20 It is quite difficult, as an average American, to
step back and appreciate our place in the ecosphere. Social
concerns, economic duress, and material pursuits ensure that our
attention is fixated elsewhere. But pause for a moment and
imagine. The biosphere exists in an intricate harmony unmatched
by any mechanical system. As a species, we used to be a part of
this harmony. Our survival used to depend upon specific forces of
nature. The disruption of buffalo migration could potentially erase
a civilization. We’ve risen above this vulnerability. We now prey
upon every corner of the biosphere from our comfortable perch
atop a pyramid of technological prowess. But our safety is an
illusion, a convenience only realized over the last few centuries.
For millions of years prior to our existence, planet earth cultivated
fascinating forms of life from mountain tops to ocean floors. We
cannot survive without our planet, but the earth will continue to
flourish with life without us. To escape your petty anxieties, and to
allow all of this information to permeate your psyche, if but for an
instant, is to understand the sheer necessity for environmental
justice. “It is inconceivable to me,” writes Leopold, “that an ethical
relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for
land, and a high regard for its value.”21 We are products of this land
and its magnificence, and, as humans, we have the unique ability to
appreciate this.
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Given the nature of environmentalism, we cannot place faith in
our politicians, or in any charismatic figurehead. Our conservative
leadership loves to canonize liberal philosophers, given, of course,
that they’re dead. The works of Christ, Thoreau, Ghandi, and King
are espoused with glowing admiration and lend support to the
environmental cause, yet politicians are frightened by the prospect
of their implementation. Indeed, our current administration has
gone to great political lengths to avoid facing up to
environmentalism. In 2002, the White House removed mention of
global warming from a report on air pollution. Then in 2003, the
EPA’s Draft Report on the Environment—declared as
“comprehensive” and “sophisticated” by its authors—was again
stripped of any reference to climate change. Attempts were made
by the Bush administration to “remove the scientifically
indisputable statement that ‘[c]limate change has global
consequences for human health and the environment.’”22
Meanwhile, conservative groups in Texas have succeeded in
editing the science curriculum in the public school system.
Environmental science texts have been modified, even rejected in
one case, for their “un-American” discussion of pollution and
urban sprawl.23 It’s one thing to ignore a problem. It’s an entirely
different thing to make efforts to cover it up altogether. The hostile
opposition which environmentalists encounter in the public arena
is a testament to America’s addiction to such luxurious myths.
Although the significance of environmental justice is equal
across global demographics, it is—in its most raw form—a
struggle within the individual. John Stuart Mill, in perfecting his
“Greatest Happiness Principle,” reclassified pleasure into two
categories: higher and lower. Mill concluded that “those who are
equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating” the
two types of pleasure “do give a most marked preference to the
manner of existence which employs their higher faculties.”24 This
duality, between intellectual rewards and the quick, superficial fix
of a recent purchase, has become the defining conflict of our lives,
whether we realize it or not. An unfavorable feature of capitalism
is that it preys upon the base pleasures, the pleasures that Mill,
ironically in our age of mass consumption, likened to those of a
pig. Behold The Bachelor, the Big Mac, the Hummer H2—seldom
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Connor Narciso
will a corporation show hesitation in the race for the lowest
denominator. Our battle is one in opposition to a new age of
manufactured desires, the result of a mental environment littered
with commercials and billboards. And today, our salvation may lie
in the resolve of ordinary citizens. Milton Friedman reminds us
that “people responsible for pollution are consumers, not
producers. They create, as it were, a demand for pollution.”25
While Friedman conveniently ignores the fact that corporations
routinely lie, cheat, and steal at the expense of the environment, he
illustrates an important point: Without our reckless pursuit of
excess, the corporations who now poison streams and belch smoke
would be rendered impotent.
As a political issue, the environmental crisis offers no
traditional solution. In a capitalist democracy, it comes as second
nature to assume that any problem can be solved with the right
amount of money. In this case, however, the problem is immune to
any tax hike or appropriation. Sacrificing our lifestyles is our only
option. To many of us this sounds suspiciously like sacrificing our
happiness, and this flawed logic is the root of the environmental
crisis. If, in fact, personal happiness were the price of
environmental protection, then we would truly be facing a dilemma
of epic proportions. In such a case, resistance to environmentalism
would be defensible on moral grounds. The truth, despite adamant
objections from the status quo, is that wealth and material
possessions are no measure of happiness. We’ve all heard the
cliches, yet materialism remains the unwritten law that we live by.
The virtues of a modest life are well known and have been
exhorted by great thinkers across civilizations. Epicurus pleaded
that “if we do not possess many, we may enjoy the few in the
genuine persuasion that those have the sweetest pleasure in luxury
who least need it.”26 When we approach happiness in relative
terms, we’re destined for disappointment. It’s very simple. Look
around one final time, and observe your neighbors, rich and poor.
Virtue is not exclusive to the former, nor is vice to the latter. The
higher aspirations in life transcend the income gap. Epictitus, in his
appeal to humility, encapsulates the solution: “Ask not that events
should happen as you will, but let your will be that events should
happen as they do, and you shall have peace.”27
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Subtle changes within all of our lives can repair the damage
being waged upon the earth. As moral agents in an economic
setting, it is time to abandon our dependence upon some of our free
market theories. These myths have been embraced and propagated
based not upon their merits, but by elite opportunists whose
interest they immediately serve. On a more emotional level, the
most rewarding effects of environmental ethics are the lessons it
teaches us about our own happiness. No closure awaits our
constant manipulation of the environment to suit our desires.
Instead our desires should naturally align themselves with the
balance of nature. As consumers, we’re trapped in a cyclical
endeavor to fill an emotional void. And with each new product we
purchase, another void is born. As we learn to live more
responsibly with our planet, we slowly shake loose of these trivial
concerns. There is something profoundly philosophical about this
harmonious correlation. It is the essence of ecocentrism.
Notes
1 Michael Malloy, Experiencing the World’s Religions, 2nd Ed. (Mountain View,
CA: Mayfield Publishing, 2002), 35.
2 Andrew Blaustein, and Pieter T.J. Johnson, “Explaining Frog Deformities,”
Scientific American, February 2003, 60.
3 Virginia Morell, “The Sixth Extinction,” National Geographic, February,
1999, 43.
4 Morell, 45.
5 Thomas Karl and Kevin Trenberth, “Modern Global Climate Change,”
Science, 5 December 2003, 1719.
6 David Goodstein, Out of Gas (New York: Norton, 2004), 15.
7 Goodstein, 75.
8 Karl and Trenberth, 1719.
9 Joel Cohen, “Human Population in the Next Half Century,” Science, 14
November 2003, 1172.
10 Robert L. Nadeau, The Wealth of Nature (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2003), 7-8.
11 Nadeau, 188.
12 Nadeau, 188.
13 William Greider, The Soul of Capitalism (New York: Simon & Schuster,
2003), 37.
14 U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, Politics
and Science in the Bush Administration (Washington DC; GPO, 2003).
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15 Ashley Shelby, “Whatever it Takes,” The Nation, 5 April 2004, 16.
16 Kristin Shrader Frechette, Public Lecture. Philosophy Department, University
of San Francisco.
17 Blaustein and Johnson, 64.
18 Judith A. Boss, Analyzing Moral Issues (Boston: McGraw Hill Higher
Education, 2002), 622.
19 Boss, 623-624.
20 Boss, 622.
21 Boss, 624.
22 House of Representatives, 24-25.
23 Dan Oko, “Rewriting Texas Texts,” Mother Jones, July/August 2003, 17.
24 Boss, 50.
25 Milton and Rose Friedman, Free To Choose (New York: Harcourt, Brace,
Jovanovich, 1979), 215.
26 Ethics class handout.
27 Ethics class handout
Connor Narciso
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Metaphoric Truth
Pepper Austin
Writer’s comment: In Brian Komei Dempster’s Modern American
Poetry class, we read Wallace Stevens, an assignment which did
not thrill me in the beginning. Before this class I had only been
exposed to Stevens’ earlier poetry, and though I found it beautiful,
it never interested me. However, as we began to discuss Stevens’
later poetry, I was intrigued by the way he questioned language,
truth, and the role of the poet. “Of Modern Poetry” is a perfect
example of Stevens’ constant struggle to come to grips with the
impossibility of truth in language, and at the same time this poem
highlights Stevens’ enduring hope even among the despair.
—Pepper Austin
Instructor’s comment: For this unit of Modern American Poetry,
we studied the evolution of Wallace Stevens’ poetry and his
attempts to write poems that were both linguistically beautiful and
socially relevant. Pepper chose to examine “Of Modern Poetry,” a
Stevens’ ars poetica that asserts what poetry should do and be. In
this close reading, Pepper pays meticulous attention to Stevens’ use
of diction, repetition, and metaphor. Pepper’s rigorous and
perceptive analysis implicitly argues for how Stevens should be
read: with only the most careful look at his rhetorical choices and
with deep awareness of the complexity of his themes.
— Brian Komei Dempster, Rhetoric and Composition
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Pepper Austin
Why do we read poetry? Why do we write poetry? Why
do we constantly attempt to define our lives? Because
the act of finding is part of human nature or, as Stevens
puts it because the “poem of the mind” is always “in the act of
finding” (line 1). In his poem, “Of Modern Poetry,” he questions
the propensity in humans to search for definition. In the poem, he
makes one emphatic declarative sentence after another about what
defines poetry. However, instead of compounding and reinforcing
a point, each sentence chips away at the infallibility of language.
Through his use of emphatic declarative sentences, anaphora, and
metaphors, and the simultaneous debunking of each, Stevens
builds a progression in which he purposely contradicts everything
he states to show that no definition created by language is definite
but only evanescent: diminishing and yet infinitesimal.
The poem opens with the declarative sentence, “The poem of
the mind in the act of finding / What will suffice” (1-2). But wait,
is that sentence declarative, and is it even a sentence? Ann M.
Gallagher addresses this question in her article “Stevens’s ��Of
Modern Poetry’,” and she finds that “the need for a proper verb in
the statement is not satisfied by the verbal finding” (91).
Therefore, the poet opens with a fragmentary sentence, and it
“becomes apparent that what appears to be a declarative sentence
is really an inverted question: What will suffice in the act of
finding the poem of the mind?” (Gallagher 91). Thus, Stevens’
statement—if read as a question—leads the reader to question if
anything will suffice. His first line, the hook of the poem, cannot
even find the right phrasing for what the poet means to say. How,
then, can the reader expect language to fulfill the poet’s need to
express himself in the rest of the poem? The reader must take
every declarative sentence thereafter with a grain of salt.
Stevens follows his Jabberwocky declarative sentence with
another declarative sentence, but then he undermines his message
with the way he phrases it. In this sentence he rejects all the poetry
preceding the modern period. He states that past poetry did not
have to understand the mind: “It has not always had / To find: the
scene was set; it repeated what / Was in the script” (2-4). Stevens
seems to point the finger at past poetry for only addressing the
aesthetics of poetry instead of epic social concerns, such as World
WRW - 57
War I. However, while this claim seems to take past poetry to task,
the poet once again undermines the declarative quality of what he
says by the way he says it. These lines have a singsong quality and
almost sound like a nursery rhyme with its simple words and
broken-up phrases. Perhaps Stevens gives these lines a childlike
quality, to show the childlike state in which he feels past poetry has
remained. Moreover, and more aptly, the playful quality of these
lines questions not only past poetry but present poetry as well.
To further this theory, he reiterates through metaphor that a
new scene has been set and that present poetry’s “past was a
souvenir” (6). Here, he makes the claim again about the triviality
of past poetry because “a souvenir is after all, a token of
some[thing] else” and “no matter how significant at one time, the
souvenir quickly loses immediacy as the crush of new reminders
crowds out older ones” (Gallagher 92). However, once again
Stevens’ message about the complete rejection of past poetry is
more complicated than it seems. Though a souvenir is a cheap
reminder of something else, the owner of the souvenir still holds
on to it and uses it to look back fondly on the past. Thus, Stevens’
declarative rejection of the past becomes ambiguous and
ambivalent. It implies that past and present poetry have and will
found always find themselves in a quandary of childlike ineptitude,
in which they struggle to express the needs of any given time,
whether aesthetic or epic or both.
Stevens then lets go of the past; however, he continues his
indictment against language. He does this again through
declarative sentences and through anaphora. In the second stanza
he tries to define all of the things that poetry “has to” do or be six
times through the didactic use of “it has to be” and other infinitive
verbs. Certainly, the use of the anaphora often adds rhythm and
reinforces a point being made. However, there is the old story that
on a draft of a preacher’s sermon he wrote next to a certain
paragraph, “not sure on this point, yell louder.” Therefore, while
the anaphora may reinforce a point, it does not explain why the
point is valid; it only “yells louder.” The repetition reflects
overcompensation and thus causes readers to question the authority
and validity of the emphatic statements being forced upon them.
Therefore, Stevens attempts to show us what poetry means through
Metaphoric Truth
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Pepper Austin
simple and supposedly clear language, but again the language fails
to offer an adequate definition.
Let us take a closer look at the statements Stevens so
emphatically makes. He claims the following about a poem:
It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
The women of the time. It has to think about war
And it has to find what will suffice. (7-10)
He uses simple clear words and clear phrases. Thus, no ambiguity
should exist in these sentences. However, what is “it”? He uses
the word “it” three times in these four lines and a total of fourteen
times in this short poem (Gallagher 93). Therefore, in order to
understand Stevens’ poem, we not only have to look at the
repetition of the phrase “it has to be,” but we have to understand
who or what “it” represents. Gallagher claims, “though in the first
few lines of the poem the pronoun clearly refers to modern poetry,
as the poem progresses the word becomes ambiguous—referring
somehow to poetry and in another real way to the poet” (93).
Thus, these “clear-cut” sentences reveal that even they have
ambiguities and hidden meanings, leading us to ask these
questions: who or what is the subject of these lines, what is meant
by “suffice,” and how should the “it” meet the men and women of
the time?
Since his use of seemingly definite and clear phrases proves
less than defining and clear, Stevens attempts to clarify the
definition of a poem through another more poetic path: extended
metaphor. He compares poem and poet to the dramatic world. He
declares that a poem/poet has to build its own stage, act a part, and
know what part the audience wants to hear. He comes up with a
Herculean task: a poet and a poem must create his/its own
universe. However, he still does not explain what defines that
universe because with each metaphor, Stevens takes the reader
further and further away from the definition. A metaphor
“involves a transfer of meaning from the word that properly
possesses it to another word which belongs to some shared
category of meaning” (McLaughlin 83). Therefore, a metaphor
helps Stevens tells us quite masterfully and beautifully what a
WRW - 59
poem “has to be” like, but he never tells us what a poem “has to
be.” Metaphors attempt to connect the poem to reality, but they
actually distance the reader further from the point of origin—the
poet’s intended meaning. Thus, as with his use of clear and
definite sentences, Stevens’ use of metaphor shows that language
does not suffice.
He further displays the fallibility of metaphor when he shifts
the figure from an actor to a musical metaphysician. Initially, he
claims that a poet must painstakingly create a whole universe with
an actor, director, audience, and setting. He now, however, rejects
this assertion when he states that a poet/poem is, “A metaphysician
in the dark, twanging / An instrument, twanging a wiry string that
gives / Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses” (20-22). In
these lines a poet/poem is not a creator but merely someone
twanging until “sudden rightnesses” comes to him/it. The wire
string gives the sound of rightness, not of the poet himself. The
poet almost becomes the instrument, while the wire string acts as
the creator. Stevens no longer makes the poet/poem in charge of
his destiny, but makes him determined by it, and thus debunks all
that he claimed as truth before.
Furthermore, he compares the poet to a metaphysician, who
according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) studies “the
branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things.”
On the surface, this reference appears to raise the poet to
unspeakable heights. However, a metaphysician according to the
OED also studies “that which is but one degree from their
Essence” and “fails to see this . . . because he is misled by a
superficial grammatical feature of his language.” Just as a
metaphor only gives something similar to the “Essence,” a
metaphysician, and thus the poet, remains one degree away from
the “Essence” and therefore can only give something similar.
Hence, a poet can never quite capture the essence of what he
means because of the “superficial grammatical features of his
language.” Once again, Stevens shows us that language can never
suffice, and therefore he can never give an adequate definition of
poetry’s purpose or meaning.
And what a sad little world this paints. Why say anything?
Why attempt anything, if nothing will suffice? Right when we
Metaphoric Truth
WRW - 60
Pepper Austin
want to despair, Stevens makes yet another declarative sentence;
this one, however, seems plausible. In it he uses the stronger verb
must instead of has, and he follows it with may. Let me clarify.
We must find satisfaction—this much he knows. Otherwise we
will despair, and he follows this “must” with a suggestion and not a
declaration. He writes,
It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. (25-28)
By offering only a suggestion, he alerts us to the fact that he does
not have an exact answer. Instead these actions define these
characters; as the poet attempts to write poetry he defines himself,
and the need is satisfied. The act is enough. No one can reach the
essence; the goal is just to skate, just to dance, just to try.
Through this poem, Stevens discredits all of his naysayers and
all of the people who want someone else to define something for
them. His poems may not fulfill someone else’s requirements, but
they fulfill his need, and they satisfy his thirst. Stevens
demonstrates that language never will say exactly what we want it
to, but that does not mean we quit trying. It is the eternal human
struggle to have someone truly understand us. His poem expresses
that though the definition of poetry is indefinite, poetry is a
celebration of the process of trying. My interpretation of the poem
may not fully encapsulate Stevens’ intentions; however, I am
making an effort, and he is making an effort. And somewhere in
the middle, we find satisfaction.
Works Cited
Gallagher, Ann M. “Stevens’s ‘Of Modern Poetry’.” The Explicator. 50:2
(1992 Winter): 91-93.
McLaughlin, Thomas. “Figurative Language.” Critical Terms For Literary
Study. Eds. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1990. 80-90.
WRW - 61
Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 2003. 11 September
2003 http://0-dictionary.oed.com.usflib.lib.usfca.edu/entrance.dtl>.
Stevens, Wallace. “Of Modern Poetry.” The Collected Poems of Wallace
Stevens. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. 239-240.
Metaphoric Truth
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Writer’s comment: William Carlos Williams’ poetry changed
considerably over time. While one of his earlier poems, “The Red
Wheelbarrow,” resonates with the distilled clarity of a haiku, his
later and longest piece, Paterson, weaves memories into a prose-like
monologue. While each piece has successfully captured the
attention of the world of literature and the public, these works
experiment with opposing approaches in terms of poetic form,
voice, and the narrator’s expression of emotion. Although the
poems are stylistically different, both reflect Williams’ unceasing
quest for refinement and revolution, which inspires many
contemporary poets and literary critics to commend and/or criticize
his changing style, including Brian Komei Dempster’s students in
Modern American Poetry.
—Hyun-Young Cho
Instructor’s comment: Throughout my Modern American Poetry
course, I encouraged students to view poems not as isolated objects
but in the larger context of any given poet’s work. In her
thoughtful essay Hyun does just this. Using representative poems
by William Carlos Williams, Hyun shows how his relationship to
imagism changed and the ways he integrated a speaker’s
perspective into his work. Hyun’s reading of Williams’ poetry is
ambitious and sophisticated, deftly blending her own assertions
and significant literary criticism. In articulating Williams’ artistic
journey, Hyun speaks to the difficulties of balancing imagery and
lyric reflection, the constant challenges of the poetic process.
— Brian Komei Dempster, Rhetoric and Composition
The Progression of
William Carlos Williams’ Use of Imagery
Hyun-Young Cho
WRW - 63
When Ezra Pound, H.D., and Richard Aldington published
the basic tenets of imagism in Poetry in March of 19131,
this new literary vogue shook the world of literature and
writing. Soon many poets joined this movement in which an image
is presented as precisely and tersely as possible without the poet’s
impression of a visual object or scene, and Williams was one of the
enthusiastic followers. While the earlier stage of his career was
committed to the principles of imagism, Williams seemed to grow
dissatisfied with the limits of imagism in that its compressed format
and concentrated treatment of language and images often restricted
the poet from exploring his own perspectives. Although he did not
discard vivid imagery, Williams began to allow his own views to
enter his poems. And gradually the objective presentation of an image,
once the center of his poetry, surrendered to the poet’s active
engagement in personalizing an image. This progression is reflected
in the body of his poetry and can be summarized by comparing three
poems. “The Red Wheelbarrow” represents the poet as a purer
imagist. On the other hand, in “Spring and All” Williams blends his
personal perspective and objective imagery. Finally, “The Sparrow”
presents a more radical alternative to imagism by presenting images
that are fully charged with the speaker’s personal emotion and
impressions.
One of Williams’ early poems, “The Red Wheelbarrow,” remains
so true to the imagists’ proposals that it earns Williams a place as one
of the significant figures in the school of imagism. The imagery of
the objects is presented with a great degree of concentration, and the
language is succinct with little personal impression. The poem is
compressed and short as illustrated below:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens. (lines 1-8)
The Progression of William Carlos Williams’ Use of Imagery
WRW - 64
Hyun-Young Cho
The poem is so visual that it looks much like a photo or a still painting
of some outdoor setting. The vessel is highlighted by its shiny surface
since it is wet, and the sunlight is reflected on the surface of it. The
chickens stress the presence of the wheelbarrow by juxtaposition.
First, “white” contrasts with “red,” enhancing the visual effects of
the poem. And the metal, angular sense of the

WRW - 1
Writing for a Real World
2003 - 2004
a multidisciplinary anthology by usf students
Published by the University of San Francisco for the
Program in Rhetoric and Composition
WRW - 2
Acknowledgments 4
Honorable Mention 7
Essays
EGYPTIAN LITERARY CENSORSHIP
Julia Smith 8
SPRECHEN SIE DEUTSCH?
Mariella Brodersen 20
THE CUBAN EMBARGO
Nicholas Miller 29
THE SAND CRAB
Perrine Sarchet 36
NATURAL CAPITAL
Connor Narciso 43
METAPHORIC TRUTH
Pepper Austin 55
THE PROGRESSION OF WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS’ USE OF IMAGERY
Hyun-Young Cho 62
INTO THE BLUE
Shannon Salter 70
WHOEVER SAID TV WAS BAD FOR YOU?
Renee Olsen 81
Table of Contents
Writing for a Real World
WRW - 3
THE HEALTHY FOREST RESTORATION ACT: A NEW PATH FOR
DESTRUCTION
Calder Lorenz 87
MARRIAGE AND EQUALITY IN CALIFORNIA
Igor Vainshtein 96
Science, Technical and Business Writing
ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AND PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIPS
Stephanie Bousley 104
ALUMINUM FILM DEPOSITION AND PHOTOLITHOGRAPHY
Monika Bough 115
COMMUNITY-BASED APPROACH TO ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
Vivian Chang and Eliot Metzger 126
HAWAII HIGH SCHOOL INCIDENT REPORT
Kala Stringert 140
SINGLE MOTHERS IN MALAYSIA: THE INTERLOCKING SYSTEMS OF
DOMINATION
Puspa Melati Nan 145
University of San Francisco
WRW - 4
Acknowledgments
The second issue of Writing for a Real World continues to
showcase excellent undergraduate writing and celebrate
outstanding undergraduate instruction at the University of San
Francisco. Our special anthology offers two distinct sections: the
first devoted to remarkable examples of the traditional academic
essay, the second providing a forum for worthy models of
scientific, business and technical report writing. Preceding these
essays and reports are introductions from the writers and their
teachers. These commentaries help elucidate the intentions behind
the assignments and give insight into the responses of the students.
Continuing a project like Writing for a Real World requires the
selfless efforts of many pairs of hands, and we acknowledge the
contributions and skills of those who continue to make this
publication possible. We are deeply grateful to Jennifer Turpin,
Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Dean Rader,
Associate Dean of Arts and Humanities, College of Arts and
Sciences, for their generous financial support and remarkable
commitment to undergraduate writing. A large debt, as well, goes
to Freddie Wiant, Coordinator of the Program in Rhetoric and
Composition, for her enthusiastic support in the production of
Writing for a Real World. We also thank Carol Faldet of Johnson
Printing Service, for helping us get this edition onto the printed
page, and publication committee members Mark Meritt, Devon
Christina Holmes and Brian Komei Dempster for shepherding
another edition of this anthology by providing astute editorial
support.
Choosing the winning entries is a labor-intensive, day-long
task that requires the purely voluntary efforts of already over-committed
USF faculty members. Our judges reviewed carefully
more than 140 submissions (from which the students’ names had
been removed). Every submission was read by at least two
readers, and every winning submission had to pass the review of at
least four readers. For performing this prodigious task with
unfailing grace and patience, we humbly thank the superb efforts
of our volunteer readers: Allan Cruse, Brian Komei Dempster,
Writing for a Real World
WRW - 5
University of San Francisco
Evan Elliot, Devon Christina Holmes, Kristen Kennedy, Saera R.
Khan, Mark Meritt, Maureen O’ Sullivan, Darrell g. h. Schramm,
Kern Trembath, Sally Vance-Trembath, Zachary M. White and
Freddie Wiant. Their focused dedication to USF students breathes
life into Writing for a Real World.
Our resident guardian angels, Sara Allshouse and Sandy
Teixeira, deserve special mention for managing our submissions,
keeping us passably sane, and helping us in ways too numerous to
describe. Thanks, too, to Michelle Squitieri for timely pizza on
judgment day, to John Pinelli and Norma Washington for balancing
the budget, and to Johnnie Hafernik, Chair of Communication
Studies, for her friendly encouragement and for helping us get the
word out to students and faculty.
Finally, thank you to all the teachers who encouraged students
to submit their work—both from our main campus and our
regional campuses. Our deepest gratitude is reserved for those
brave hearted students for daring to accept their challenge. The
competition was stiff, and, as our Honorable Mention list shows,
we received many more commendable essays and reports than we
were able to include. Congratulations to those who earned
honorable mention—we hope to hear from you again next year.
And, of course, congratulations to this year’s winners, four of
whom repeat from last year. Our newest authors bravely enter the
realm of published authors writing for a real world.
—David C. Ryan and Victor Squitieri, Editors
WRW - 6
on the web at www.usfca.edu/rhetcomp/journal/
Writing for a Real World
University of San Francisco
Cowell Hall, 4th Floor
2130 Fulton Street
SF, CA 94117
WRW - 7
Honorable Mention
Casey Farmer
18 Wayfarer
Robert Fischer
Reinvigorating Youth Political Involvement
Alexis Hisaka
Newsmedia: Complete Truth or Exaggerated Truth?
Courtney Howard
Incident Report: World Class Coffee and Confections
Chad Mahalich
Persuasion and Subliminal Messages
and
Communicatory Problems in the Workplace
Heidi Rabanes
Multiple Teachers, One Lesson: A Team-Effort Against
Childhood Obesity
Crystal Roberts
Female Pop-Artists: Advocates of Gender Stereotypes
Shannon Salter
An Ugly Business
and
The Bubble
Hajra Sheikh
Gurinder Chadha’s ‘Bend It Like Beckham’
WRW - 8
Egyptian Literary Censorship: A Violation
of Rights and Repression of Intellectual
Thought
Julia Smith
Instructor’s comment: For the major research paper in the Writing
Seminar, students were asked not only to create a proposal for a
carefully researched issue beyond the reach of the United States
and suggest a few steps toward a possible solution but also to, in
the end, write an actual letter (which I mailed) to a person in a
decision-making capacity regarding the problem and the suggested
proposal. Because Julia's sister attended a university in Cairo, both
sisters were concerned if not frustrated at the lack of access to
certain fields of knowledge. Among the emphases of the course, as
in the Jesuit mission, is the promotion of intellectual inquiry and
the endeavor to see more than two sides to an issue, as well as
writing, for the greater common good. Julia took these goals to
heart in choosing her topic for investigation. She followed her
carefully formal essay with a respectfully written letter to a person
in position of authority suggesting possible steps toward
decreasing censorship.
— Darrell g.h. Schramm, Rhetoric and Composition
Writer’s comment: As an English major and lover of language and
literature, I find the topic of freedom of speech and literary
expression a pressing issue. When Professor Schramm asked us to
write a proposal relating to human rights, I felt this assignment
would be a good opportunity to explore censorship. As I
researched the facets of oppression and denial of civil liberties in
Egypt, I was struck by the increasingly widespread censorship of
writers and artists and chose to address this concern. I found this
paper to be a welcome challenge — I was required not only to
research a social problem but propose a plan of action to remedy
this problem. This requirement allowed me to voice more of my
own concerns and ideas about censorship in general and think
more about solutions for other social injustices.
— Julia Smith
WRW - 9
Egyptian Literary Censorship
Introduction
Books have traditionally played an important role in Islamic
society, furthering the spread of the Muslim religion
through the distribution of the Qu’ran and also making
Islamic scholars famous for their ventures into science, religion
and literature. The Muslims’ scholarly thirst and the Qu’ran, which
is central to the Islamic faith, have ensured that books were kept a
critical part of scholarly, religious, and daily life. However,
according to Dr. Fauzi M. Najjar, Professor Emeritus of Political
Science at Michigan State University in his article “Book Banning
in Contemporary Egypt,” there have been a number of assaults in
Egypt directed at the written works as well as at the writers and
scholars who produced them. Over the centuries, these books and
writers have been condemned mainly for political or religious
reasons (400).
Many scholars, religious officials, and members of the public
have opposed this censorship because it undermines the freedom of
both authors and readers. Egyptian writer Eduard Al-Kharrat gives
an oft-heard reason for this anti-censorship feeling in his argument
for the controversial author Salman Rushdie: “Without freedom no
creative work is even conceivable. It is not sufficient that the artist
should merely consider himself essentially free; the work of art
itself must also become a freedom—of choice and of construction”
(32). The greater flow of ideas and scholarly thought has been
suppressed for the past several decades due to censorship of books
that challenge commonly held beliefs of Islam. In general, books
are held in high esteem by Muslims; however, some books have
been banned, denied entrance to society, even burned. It is
understandable that the government and people would not want
their religion to be attacked or desecrated in these books; however,
the long-standing laws and agreements Egypt abides by allow for
this freedom of expression. It is by challenging the mind and
thoughts that we learn. Therefore, the censorship of books and
authors hinders advances, like those made throughout history,
which preserve Egypt’s intellectual life. Unfortunately, the
practice of book banning in Egypt has reached new heights in
recent years; I will be exploring the magnitude and severity of this
WRW - 10
Julia Smith
practice, along with the disadvantages it poses to Egyptian society
and the violations against human rights it envelops.
Statement of the Problem
During the past two decades, censorship has become a highly
controversial issue in Egypt. There has been conflict between the
government and scholarly institutions and the artists and writers of
Egypt, confusion and debate over which materials pose threats to
the good of society and Islam, and insistence and refutation of
rights. First, I would like to focus on the laws and branches of
administration that manage the censorship of books and the
protection of Islam through this censorship. In 1985, al-Azhar, the
university established by the government as the “supreme Islamic
institution which safeguards, honors, and disseminates Islamic
heritage,” was also entrusted with the responsibility of overseeing
the “publication, translation, and composition of intellectual
material” through its Islamic Research Academy. This institution
has been managing the publication of everything relating to
religion with the Council of Ministries and Ministries of Culture,
Interior and Defense. These offices decide which books and other
printed materials can and will be printed and distributed in Egypt
as well as the distribution of foreign publications in Egypt (Najjar
403-405).
Laws and rulings made during the past fifty years in particular
have expanded the jurisdiction of agencies that oversee printed
material and also broadened measures the government may use
regarding prevention of objectionable work being sold or
published. In fact, an Egyptian judge even ruled unexpurgated
copies of A Thousand and One Nights to contain objectionable
passages which “posed a threat to the country’s moral fabric.”
Copies of this work, which is recognized as being very significant
to Arabic heritage, were seized and confiscated. A censorship
committee established in 1962 under the Emergency Laws of the
Suez War was given authority to seize books and printed materials
from bookstores, publishing houses and even from private
libraries. Several subsequent laws expanded the scope of
restriction of printed (as well as other musical and artistic) work;
these gave various ministries the power to ban or censor any
WRW - 11
Egyptian Literary Censorship
publications that contain objectionable sexual content, attack or
challenge Islam or other religions, promote atheism, or cross any
moral boundary they see fit. Along with these guidelines set by the
government, there is the additional limitation: publications are
subject to examination before production or distribution, and are
prohibited if they are not examined (Najjar 401-404). These laws
were made to further promote Islam and stop religious extremism;
however, some argue that they were also made on political grounds
and contradict other rules and the Egyptian constitution.
With the understanding of the aforementioned laws and
regulations, many organizations and individuals contest their
enforcement, claiming it is a violation of human rights as well as
other existing Egyptian law. The Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, which Egypt has signed, calls for the protection of “the
moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary,
or artistic production” in Article 27, in addition to the right to
freedom of opinion and expression and to “seek, receive, and
impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of
frontiers” in Article 19 (31, 35). On these articles alone, the
censorship of these printed materials conflicts with Egyptian law.
However, Najjar also makes the case that Egypt holds its own
freedom of expression and freedom of the press clauses in its own
constitution: Article 48 guarantees “freedom of the press, printing,
publication and the information media.” The rector of al-Azhar,
Shaykh Muhammead Sayyid Tantawi, whose university plays such
a large role in censorship, even wrote during the controversy of
Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses that “the best remedy for
people like [Rushdie] is to read the book and refute it scientifically,
thus unveiling its falsehoods and exposing its author” (Najjar 401).
However, in his compilation 100 Banned Books: Censorship
Histories of World Literature, Dr. Nicholas Karolides points out
that The Satanic Verses, a novel recognized and awarded the world
over, is banned in Egypt and thusly not available for scholarly
examination and refutation (255). Despite the many cases of
harassment of journalists and banning of books, the Egyptian
government holds the position that its agencies and laws governing
censorship are much more lenient than other countries. This may
WRW - 12
Julia Smith
be true; however, denying that censorship exists seems almost
absurd.
Richard Engel, a journalist for the Middle East Times,
conducted an interview with Lutfi Abdel Kader, head of the office
responsible for reviewing foreign publications before they gain
admittance. Kader implied that censorship is not an issue in Egypt,
reporting, “Censorship was canceled following a decision of
President Sadat in 1974. Since this date our work is only now to
see what the news media write about Egypt. There is no
censorship.” Kader goes on to say that if there is a writer or issue
the office does not approve of, the office dictates that it must not
be published again. Regarding the issue of writings concerning the
Islamic religion, he reported, “You can write about Islam what you
like, but not attacking it” (Engel). However, if this is the case, I
think it is clear that freedom of the press or opinion is not allowed.
Writers may not report or discuss certain issues, and certainly not
every statement regarding opinion of Islam is permitted. Although
the government gives the impression that censorship does not
happen very often, Lutfi Kader commented that his office sees
papers that “must” be censored as often as once a week (Engel).
Another official, Abdel-Aziz Ibrahim, secretary-general of the
Islamic Research Academy, quoted that in 1999, as many as 250
written works discussing Islam were censored, and another 16,000
cassette tapes on Islamic subjects were banned (El-Din). These
numbers show an alarming rate of censorship, but it is not confined
to religious subjects. As for political content in newspapers and
other printed materials, Thomas Cromwell, publisher of the Middle
East Times, reported that there are no independent political
newspapers or media in Egypt; all major media outlets are
government- or party-controlled (Cromwell). Thus, the press of
Egypt and whatever thoughts it attempts to present are censored by
the government for whichever reasons it chooses to give – or in
some cases, withhold.
The strict regulations and severe censorship of books in Egypt
obviously make for many reports of book banning and writer
harassment, in some cases for no clear reason. Accordingly, I will
discuss the confiscation and censorship of particular books in the
general market of the Egyptian public as well as in scholarly
WRW - 13
Egyptian Literary Censorship
institutions, which some activists argue is “intellectual terrorism”
(Najjar 402). Some cases of banned books are known the world
over because of international controversy, like Salman Rushdie’s
works; others are particular to Egypt. One recent book whose
censorship was highly debated is Al Wasaya fi Ishq Al-Nisaa
(translated as Commandments for Loving Women) by poet Ahmed
Al-Shahawi. The conservative Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram
Weekly Online reported the book was on the market, and then was
removed due to a religious official’s complaint. However, a
committee examining the book following the complaint supported
its publication (Rakha). Although, in this case, the author’s rights
were ultimately supported, many writers and publishers are not so
lucky. The same newspaper detailed the account of Haydar
Haydar’s experience: his book A Banquet of Seaweed was
condemned in 2000 for sexually explicit passages; its content so
outraged the president of al-Azhar University that he urged that
copies of the book be burned (El-Din). Al-Shahawi and Haydar
are only two examples of many current authors whose books face
censorship or prohibition and who may also experience constant
harassment. Nawal El Saadawi is a woman who knows her
country’s censorship policy all too well. In an article for the Index
on Censorship in 1990, the writer and women’s issues activist
discussed the actions taken against her and her books. El Saadawi
said that her book The Naked Face of Arab Eve was banned from
entry to Egypt because of its supposedly blasphemous content –
“religion, sex, and the ruling establishment” (16). After its
publication, political and religious authorities pressured the
Ministry of Health to dismiss El Saadawi from her post there; she
also lost her positions as chief editor of a health journal and in the
Medical Association of Egypt. She received death threats by
fundamentalists and others who opposed her work before leaving
the country to teach abroad in 1992 (Karolides 207). What is
obvious, Egyptian authors not only must fear censorship and
prohibition of their controversial work but also live in danger for
voicing their opinions.
Universities are considered to be places of learning where our
newest generations prepare to step into the adult world. However,
even the most prestigious and Westernized universities in Egypt
WRW - 14
Julia Smith
have had their libraries censored. My older sister Melissa attended
the American University at Cairo from 1996-1997 to further her
study of anthropology. She happened to attend at a time when
there was controversy regarding books assigned as required
material at AUC and described the circumstances and atmosphere
surrounding this affair to me in an interview (Smith). The books in
question were considered classics: The Prophet by Khalil Jibran,
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov and Maxime Rodinson’s Muhammad.
All were previously assigned as required reading for some classes
but were removed from the university’s libraries after undergoing
extreme pressure from the Egyptian Censor. The books were
considered to be an attack on Islamic values and the minds of the
students attending the school, and therefore removed to protect the
students’ well-being (Najjar 402). Melissa witnessed the reactions
of the students and said that some students agreed with the
censorship, claiming that they did not want to be exposed to the
material. However, many others argued that they should be
permitted access to these works and were angered that their
institution’s libraries would be restricted in content. Melissa also
told me that students from Egypt studying abroad at the University
of California, Santa Cruz, were amazed at the volumes of books
that were openly available at UCSC; these books were the very
same which had been banned in the libraries at AUC due to
government intervention.
Melissa spent her year at AUC learning Arabic and studying
anthropology, becoming very familiar with the Islamic culture
present in Egypt: its traditions, strongholds, and weaknesses. She
acknowledged the reasons for the universities’ censorship, but
wondered whether it was holding back an essential part of
students’ schooling to keep them ‘protected’ from new ideas
(Smith). This idea of censorship repressing intellectualism has
also been expressed in the much-praised report from the United
Nations, the Arab Human Development Report of 2003. In a press
release titled “A Call to ‘Reclaim Arab Knowledge’” regarding the
report, which was written by recognized Arab scholars and opinion
leaders, the immediacy of the need to take action against
censorship was stressed: “Arab leaders need to close a ‘growing
knowledge gap’ by investing heavily in education and promoting
WRW - 15
Egyptian Literary Censorship
open intellectual inquiry.” The release emphasized the way that
Arab countries, including Egypt, are falling behind their peers due
to unnecessary censorship which results in a lower-rate of
education (1).
The consequences of letting this problem remain are already
visible and will continue to grow if Egypt’s leaders do not devise a
solution to allow real freedom of speech and opinion through the
press. The public has shown its opposition to the government’s
censorship policy and Egyptian education and culture are suffering.
The Egyptian branch of the International Pen Club has even gone
so far as to say that book banning “encourages intellectual
terrorism, driving society into atrophy and backwardness” (Najjar
402). Perhaps this candid statement, however, is what the
government needs to hear. Egyptian writers who wish to use their
freedom of expression are fleeing the country fearing censorship or
harassment from religious extremists, creating a dearth of new
work. Although the country boasts the Nobel prize winning writer
Naguib Mahfuz, a successor from Egypt may be among the ranks
of writers leaving the country to gain creative freedom (Najjar
421). In fact, at this year’s International Conference on the Arab
Novel in October, the novelist who was recognized for the highest
award in Arabic literature declined the money and title. The
reasoning behind Sonallah Ibrahim’s actions? In his own words, he
decided to “publicly decline the prize because it is awarded by a
government that, in my opinion, lacks the credibility of bestowing
it.” Ibrahim used his acceptance speech to express his solidarity
with the movement of cultural and literary freedom (Mehrez).
Ibrahim’s decision speaks powerfully and sums up the desperate
need for a solution to this repression.
Proposal
To preserve and revive its intellectual life, Egypt must take
steps to cut down on needless censorship and bring scholarly
challenge back to its university systems by providing a broader
range of available materials. I will outline a possible course of
action which takes into account both the concerns of religious and
scholarly leaders.
WRW - 16
Julia Smith
The beginning step in reconciling Egypt’s policies and the
freedom of speech they currently deny lies in honesty, clear
guidelines, and rules unmotivated by politics and power. In order
to create a greater degree of creative freedom, the government
must honestly and straightforwardly relax the current guidelines,
which include so many possible objections that they could
condemn practically any written work. Working with academic
leaders, the government could craft guidelines which allow more
publications to stay uncensored. This sort of relaxed rule might
cause some members of the religious community to argue that
without the current limitations, writers could possibly blaspheme
the Muslim religion – the reason most commonly cited for
censorship. However, despite what the Egyptian public is allowed
to see, Islam will still be depicted in a light seen as unfavorable
due to other countries’ freedom of expression. What the new
Egyptian guidelines will provide for, however, is an opportunity
for more discussion of Islam, unfettered by limitations. Works
produced under these guidelines may be used to further Islamic
culture throughout the world through Egyptian writing.
Once writers have greater control over their creative
expression, there doubtless will be attacks on authors writing about
any subject from those with opposing viewpoints. Currently, many
writers have been harassed and physically harmed for the content
of their writing. Authors have been attacked by people with
opposing viewpoints and some even face fatwas, or bounties,
decreed by individuals or private organizations for their deaths
(Najjar 402). Therefore, there need to be provisions to protect all
artists and writers, regardless of their views or opinions. A specific
law making persecution or harassment of writers and journalists
illegal would help ensure everyone’s safety and provide an
environment in which writers are not afraid to voice their opinions.
This law should not be an extra burden to enforce; it simply
extends and ensures personal safety for all people and reduces the
climate of hostility. It may be argued that this law is unnecessary,
but the sheer number of writers affected by this type of harassment
shows that an additional precaution is important. I believe that
once the government has specifically made provisions for this
protection and enforces it by prosecuting those who do disobey the
WRW - 17
law, it will cut down on the number and severity of attacks against
authors and journalists.
The third step in improving the situation of censorship would
be to reevaluate appointment of members to committees that
oversee publication of written work. At this moment, committees
are composed of officials who are very biased towards censorship.
High-ranking religious and political officials decide which material
will benefit the Egyptian public, which many times does not agree
with their decisions. This executive power needs to be distributed
among people of many different backgrounds to avoid one-sided
evaluations of publications. In order to make this process more
fair (and hopefully one day eliminate it completely), committee
members should be elected and appointed by the people who will
be affected by their choices —the Egyptian public. The public’s
election of a more well-rounded committee including religious and
academic leaders may help to evaluate written work on a larger
scale of benefits. In this way, the decision making process is
democratized and made more accessible to the general public, who
has shown dissatisfaction with the current system.
Many important scholars and the Egyptian university students
at large have expressed their frustration with the censorship of
university libraries. Thus, an important step in the solution process
is to restore institutional libraries to their former greatness,
returning banned books to the shelves so that more material and
ideas are available to the academic world. A great number of
books were used in university libraries for a number of years, and
then were removed due to a few complaints. These books, such as
the three classics banned at the American University at Cairo,
should be returned to the scholarly community, where they had
been used previously without any objection. Members of the
academic community have shown support for the expansion of the
libraries to include controversial books, as all the material furthers
the students’ knowledge and sense of liberty and prepares them to
be the next generation of high-achieving Egyptians. These steps
may help to calm tensions between opposite-thinking groups and
restore the flow of thought and creativity. To quote writer Eduard
Al-Kharrat, in order to help Egypt retain its heritage, “[W]e must
continue to summon everyone to take part in the dialogue” (34).
Egyptian Literary Censorship
WRW - 18
Julia Smith
Conclusion
The increasing repression of printed publications that the
Egyptian government considers objectionable is causing a major
problem in the intellectual realm and elsewhere. Laws,
government agencies and religious institutions are subjecting
books to excessive censorship, and their attitude fosters an
environment in which free speech is severely limited. As many
Arab scholars and writers have collectively argued, this
environment is not conducive to creativity and the
accomplishments and growth that accompany it. Censorship is
especially affecting the academic community—the universities of
Egypt and the books their libraries offer to students. According to
the United Nations Development Programme’s press release on its
Arab Human Development Report, “The educational system has
failed to connect Arab literature as a living medium to Arab culture
and society,” depriving students of the fullest education (3). This
censorship of written work and harassment of its authors must be
stopped, and the Egyptian government must play the main role to
induce the religious community and the public as a whole to accept
liberty of expression for everyone through the written word. With
the steps mentioned above, there is hope to revitalize Egypt’s rich
literary history before it is too late.
Works Cited
“A Call to ‘Reclaim Arab Knowledge’.” Amman, Jordan: United Nations
Development Programme, 2003.
Al-Kharrat, Eduard. “Concerning Repression, Liberty, and the Affirmation of
the Right To be Different.” For Rushdie: Essays by Arab and Muslim
Writers in Defense of Free Speech. Ed. George Braziller. New York:
George Braziller, Inc. 1994: 32-34.
Cromwell, Thomas. “Letter from Exile.” Middle East Times 21 Sept. 1997.
20 Nov. 2003. .
El-Din, Gamal Essan. “Azhar Censorship Zealously Defended.” Al-Ahram
Weekly Online 8-14 June 2000. 1 Nov. 2003. .
El Saadawi, Nawal. “Defying Submission.” Index On Censorship 19.9 (1990):
16.
WRW - 19
Engel, Richard. “Press Censor Denies Censorship: An Interview with Lutfi
Abdel Kader.” Middle East Times 24 Aug. 1997. 5 Nov. 2003.
.
Karolides, Nicholas J., Margaret Bald, and Dawn B. Sova. “The Hidden Face
of Eve.” 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature.
New York Checkmark Books. 1999: 205-208.
— — — . “The Satanic Verses.” 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of
World Literature. New York: Checkmark Books. 1999: 249-257.
Mehrez, Samia. “The Value of Freedom.” Al-Ahram Weekly Online 30 Oct.
2003. 29 Nov. 2003. .
Najjar, Fauzi M. “Book Banning in Contemporary Egypt.” The Muslim World
91.3 (2001): 399-424.
Rakha, Youssef. “Inquisition Interrupted.” Al-Ahram Weekly Online 18 Sept.
2003. 1 Nov. 2003. .
Smith, Melissa. Personal Interview. 22 Nov. 2003.
“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” The Fourth R 11.2 (2001): 31,
35.
Egyptian Literary Censorship
WRW - 20
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
Mariella Brodersen
Writer’s comment: Overcoming language barriers can be both the
best and worst thing about traveling. Although I grew up
trilingually, I have had my fair share of awkward moments when
trying to communicate with others during my vacations. While
language barriers are often a problem for me, it recently crossed
my mind that none of my friends know any languages other than
English. For this reason, I have become increasingly aware of the
lack of foreign language education among my peers and the
advantage in that regard that I have over them, particularly when
traveling. When Professor Holmes assigned a research paper about
a social issue, I knew this was my chance to research present
foreign language education policies and to propose a solution. The
assignment was a great opportunity for me to work with Professor
Holmes in combining my personal thoughts and feelings about this
issue and transforming them into a concrete proposal essay.
— Mariella Brodersen
Instructor’s comment: For the documented research argument in
my spring 2004 RC 220 course, I asked students to identify a
significant societal problem and to propose a solution. Mariella’s
background and academic interests lent themselves to the topic she
selected: foreign language education policies in the U.S. What she
ultimately created is a solid argument for why it is so crucial that
American schools recognize foreign language instruction as being
a fundamental (rather than an “elective”) component of every
student’s education. One specific quality that distinguishes her
essay is the expertise she demonstrates throughout; her sources are
well-chosen and smoothly integrated so that they manage to
support rather than overwhelm her own ideas about the topic. I
teach my students that in many kinds of writing situations,
combining personal experience with scholarly research can be a
strength, and Mariella does an exemplary job of demonstrating
how compelling that fusion can be.
— Devon Christina Holmes, Rhetoric and Composition
WRW - 21
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
Every day, I ride San Francisco’s public transportation
system, MUNI, to and from the University of San
Francisco. During my forty-minute commute I am
immersed in a miniature mobile portrait of the city’s multicultural
diversity. Heading toward the campus of USF, one of the most
diverse schools in the nation, I realize that the environment on the
bus is not so different from the environment at school. In both
areas I am exposed to various encounters with people from
different backgrounds, both in race and ethnicity. However,
between the two, it is only on MUNI that I am faced with language
barriers.
Although the de facto official language in the United States is
English, it is evident that English is not the only language spoken
here. Alongside the growth of the United States as a “melting pot”
of various languages, cultures, and ethnicities, language barriers
are becoming more and more of a societal issue. While the U.S.
has created numerous programs for migrants to learn English as a
second language, there has been little or no emphasis on educating
citizens in languages other than English. As a result, there is a great
need for educational policies that counterbalance the growth of
multicultural diversity in the United States. Lack of significant
attention to this problem and the subsequent efforts put into
existing programs has led to the decline of foreign language
proficiency. Therefore, proposing the establishment of a national
foreign language education policy (FLEP) should be required in
school curricula to embrace the study of foreign languages,
beginning in early childhood, as a necessary component of a
balanced education. In doing so, language barriers would diminish,
benefiting society and the multicultural community as a whole.
In a nation where diversity is now more common than ever,
one would assume that there would be an increased interest in the
accommodation of differences. In actuality, motivation to learn a
second language is minimal (Sandrock, 2002). Considering the
struggle many students have with English grammar skills alone,
learning a second language is usually a result of necessity rather
than interest. For example, it is only because of graduation
requirements that many high school students bother to study a
foreign language. Other than this, the likelihood of an individual
WRW - 22
Mariella Brodersen
picking up a foreign text would be the result of preparation for an
upcoming vacation, and even this is only a temporary strategy for
dissolving language boundaries.
While most schools deem it important to require students to
study a foreign language for a year of more in high school, the
truth is that the system is not universal. Over ten years ago, in
1993, policies were put in place to make foreign language
education accessible to all; however, the programs have resulted in
little or no change (Met, 2003):
Only about 25% of public elementary schools offer the option of FL study
to some or all of their students, compared with 65% of suburban private
schools. In middle schools that offer FL courses, only 51% of public
schools report enrolling half or more of the school’s students; in private,
secular middle schools, 78% report that more than half their students are
taking a year-long course. In 1997, 90% of U.S. high schools offered a
foreign language, down from 95% in 1987. (591)
Lack of interest, lack of funds, and administrative pressure have
allowed for the decrease in availability of a substantial foreign
language education. Consequently, the few students, if any, who
were interested in learning another language have now been cut off
from resources, leaving them and other students at a greater
disadvantage than before.
Unfortunately, the ability and tremendous opportunity for
children, apart from high school students, to learn foreign
languages has been neglected. “Research tells us that childhood is
the perfect time to begin the study of languages: […] at no other
time in our lives are we more adapted to create those valuable
synapses in the brain that support language acquisition” (Kelly et
al., 2002). Children, like sponges, soak up every bit of information
thrown in their direction. “Experts agree that children age 10 or
younger have a special ability to learn new languages. Not only do
children learn faster, but after they are exposed to a foreign
language they are also better able to learn additional languages
later in life” (Hollis, 1998). To deprive children of an education
that prepares them for the diverse and multicultural world that
awaits them is disconcerting. Equally upsetting is how society, as a
result of ignorance toward the study of a foreign language, so
WRW - 23
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
willingly accepts being denied the ability to create meaningful
intercultural relationships.
For a country, as compared to others, that claims to be
progressive as far as technology, business, and the like, I find the
lack of foreign language education in the United States disturbing.
Considering that the future of international relations lies in the
hands of our youth, it would seem logical to emphasize the
welcoming of languages, culture, and diversity in their education.
In Germany, for example, I have three younger half brothers who
are currently learning English in their schools. The youngest is
presently in fifth grade, and alongside his day-to-day German
grammar courses, he has been studying English as well. In the
German public school system, English lessons begin mandatorily
in the fifth grade and proceed through high school. Upon entering
the eighth grade, all students are required to pick up another
foreign language to study throughout their high school careers. So,
on top of studying English and German grammar, my two younger
brothers have taken up yet another foreign language: French.
Therefore, the oldest of the three, who is in tenth grade, has
already been studying English for the past six years, and he is
currently finishing his third year in French. As the clock ticks and
policy makers continue to formulate plans on how best to
encourage students here in the United States to study at least one
foreign language, my younger brother gets closer and closer to
graduating with fluency in not one, but two, foreign languages.
The German model I’ve just described could certainly serve as an
example from which the United States could learn.
One of the major reasons foreign language education policies
in American schools have received little or no attention is a result
of administrative concern about the attention appropriated for basic
skills (Bruce, 2002; Kelly et al., 2002; Met, 2003). There is
legitimate concern that foreign language programs will take away
time that has been primarily allocated to the teaching and
development of elementary skills in reading, writing, and
arithmetic. Although this concern is warranted, there are ways to
satisfy all parties. Illustrating this agreement is a recent study that
offers insight toward the utility of learning a foreign language
while simultaneously giving further attention to other subjects
WRW - 24
(Kelly et al., 2002). Over a period of four years, two professors at
the University of Idaho, with assistance from an elementary school
teacher and principal, explored the results of a University of Idaho
Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES) pilot program
at a nearby elementary school. Kelly et al., 2002), successfully
created an FLES lesson for fifth graders that combines
mathematics and the automation of basic number facts with
Spanish. While there was initial concern that this integration would
decrease the “instructional time” needed for other subjects, the
program proves that both can be accomplished simultaneously. As
a result, students have left with an increased enthusiasm for
learning Spanish, alongside an understanding of mathematics
equivalent to, if not better than, what they would have walked
away with from the start (Kelly et al., 2002).
In light of the issue at hand, I propose that the United States
establish a mandatory and permanent set of foreign language
education policies that begin at the elementary school level.
Because “the authority to make LEPs resides primarily with the
states” (Met, 2003), my proposal relies heavily on a call for action
from each individual state. For the implementation of such policies
to be a success, it is essential for each state to enact policies that
facilitate the learning of foreign languages in a manner that
corresponds with the emphasis currently placed on other subjects. I
am not suggesting that each state impose a series of requirements
on top of what is already a demanding curriculum; rather, I am
proposing that each state recognize the need for foreign languages
to be incorporated into the education of our youth. Currently, the
federal No Child Left Behind Act tests students in reading and
mathematics; consequently, districts have withheld foreign
language programs from elementary schools so as to comply with
other subject requirements (Jacobson, 2004). Therefore, as part of
my proposal, I am suggesting that the No Child Left Behind Act be
restructured in a format that includes all aspects of education,
mandating the study of a foreign language along with the
development of reading skills and mathematics concepts.
While the implementation of foreign language education
policies in elementary schools is an immediate step in the right
direction, the success of my proposal lies most heavily in the hands
Mariella Brodersen
WRW - 25
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
of students, parents, and administrators. One of the biggest
challenges is convincing administrators and policy makers that
learning a foreign language is important (Met, 2003). Equally
critical is
our ability to produce students with the levels of proficiency needed. [It
will be a challenge because] most of these policy makers have achieved
political or professional success without FL proficiency; furthermore, most
have studied a language in school and do not believe the schools capable of
producing proficient language users. (Met 2003)
Hence, action must take place on a grassroots level among
communities that desire change. Interest in the study of diverse
languages must first be emphasized and noticed among groups,
namely the students and parents, before it can rise toward a state
and national level. Because children can only vote with their feet,
getting them to want to move is also an obstacle. Therefore, in
order to stimulate action, motivation must be instilled.
While extrinsic motivations, such as mandated policies and
graduation requirements, have certainly brought interest toward the
study of foreign languages, motivating students intrinsically is the
best way to establish the placement of foreign language programs
into school curriculums (Sandrock, 2002). By providing a set of
language programs that are both interesting and stimulating at an
elementary level, I believe, as does Sandrock (2002), that an
attraction can be created between students and foreign languages.
By creating intrinsic motivation toward the study of a foreign
language that comes directly from the student at an early age, a
desire to succeed in this study will continue for a number of years.
Thus, rather than relying on a few years of dedication to a
language that is merely satisfying a graduation requirement, the
focus will be shifted toward immersing children in foreign
language programs that create desires toward furthering those
studies. “Moreover, children who learn a second language show
stronger problem-solving and analytical skills as they progress
through school” (Hollis, 1998). In the end, children are not just
benefiting in their own personal education, but they will be
contributing to the foundation of a more culturally aware society as
well.
WRW - 26
Mariella Brodersen
With the significant contributions of technological
advancements in recent years, I feel that, compared to before, the
study of foreign languages can be acquired with much greater ease.
In 1998, a software program was designed for children ages 6 and
up that encouraged “a fun and engaging way to learn Spanish,
French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hebrew, Japanese, Mandarin
Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, [and] English” (Hollis, 1998). By
engaging animated characters who only speak the target language,
children are led through games, puzzles, and songs, participating in
computer exercises that challenge them to develop analytical and
problem solving skills (Hollis, 1998). Beginning with the alphabet,
the program “quickly advances to include a wide variety of
vocabulary words in the new language, such as clothing, school
supplies, food, colors, and more” (Hollis, 1998). Incorporating
such programs into elementary school curriculums has
innumerable benefits. One major advantage, for example, is that
the worries that many administrators have about finding teachers to
fill these positions are erased almost completely. Because the
program is a “teacher” in and of itself, no extra salaries are paid,
nor must administrators go through the hassle of hiring an
extended faculty.
Progress will only occur once foreign languages stop being
advocated as electives in our educational curriculums (Bruce,
2002). Although there have been recent initiatives that include the
FLE Improvement Amendments of 1999, the Foreign Language
Assistance, Title X, Part 1: Educational Excellence for All
Children Act of 1999 (McClendon, 2000), and Goals 2000:
Educate America Act (Kelly et al., 2002), language learning
remains neglected in terms of the education of our youth. It is in
the nation’s best interest to incorporate foreign language into the
basic curriculum, and I suggest that the matter be carefully
emphasized. Like Bruce (2002), I propose that businesses and
industries create a greater emphasis on “language proficient
graduates,” in hopes of creating a system that relies heavily on the
knowledge of at least two languages. Not only would the
knowledge of two languages “give a strong boost to a career; it
[would] also enrich school experiences and promote cultural
awareness and sensitivity” (Kelly et al., 2002).
WRW - 27
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
Although I have had the great privilege of growing up in a
trilingual home, I realize that there is a whole world of language
barriers I have yet to encounter. Since moving to San Francisco,
what with my morning and afternoon commute on MUNI, I have
developed a greater appreciation of and interest in cultural
diversity; yet at times I feel that perhaps I am the only one who
enjoys listening to a man sing along to his walkman in French,
while sitting next to a woman who prays in Portuguese, and
watching a mother whisper to her child in Japanese. Maybe my
interest is a result of having grown up in the suburbs, and I have
yet to accustom myself to the wide array of people who inhabit a
city. But it is for this same exact reason that I feel that all children
should grow up with a desire for cultural awareness and language
diversity, regardless of whether or not the children will be faced
with diversity as they are growing up. Children will inevitably
reach an age when they will leave their homes, and if our
education nationwide prepares these children at an early enough
age, they will enter the “real world” with an abundance of potential
and multicultural sensitivity. As a communications major, it is
important to me to continue my studies in foreign languages so as
to facilitate future relations. Equally important is my desire for
future generations to have the same, if not better, language
privileges as I had in my childhood. Because there are many
people who would love to be in my position, I feel it is necessary
to provide all children with this opportunity. Mandating foreign
language education policies into our curriculum is essential and
can only yield positive results. As Mimi Met (2003) says it in what,
I believe, is the most crucial point of all: “If we do not do it for
ourselves we cannot blame others for doing less.”
References
Bruce, A. (2002). Encouraging the growth of foreign language study. The Modern
Language Journal, 86, 605-609.
Jacobson, L. (2004). Preschoolers study foreign tongues. Education Week, 23, 1-
3.
WRW - 28
Mariella Brodersen
Hollis, N.H. (1998). New KidSpeak foreign language education software gives
young learners a valuable head start in 11 languages. Business Wire, 7-10.
Kelly, G.N., Kennedy, T.J., Eberhardt, M.B., & Austin, L.K. (2002). Learning
Spanish while practicing mathematics concepts and skills: A winning
combination. Teaching Children Mathematics, 9, 141-147.
McCleadon, L. (2000). Middle school foreign language programs: Excellence for
all students in 2000 and beyond. NAASP Bulletin, 19-25.
Met, M. (2003). Developing language education policies for our schools. The
Modern Language Journal, 87, 589-592.
Sandrock, P. (2002). Creating intrinsic motivation to learn world languages. The
Modern Language Journal, 86, 610-612.
WRW - 29
Writer’s comment: The purpose of this paper is to shed light on
U.S. hypocrisy regarding relations with foreign leaders and
nations. Throughout its history, the U.S. has supported and
installed some of the most brutal dictators. However, American
leaders claim that they will not lift the Cuban embargo because of
Castro’s human rights record. The truth is that American leaders
are willing to support any leader who supports U.S. economic
interests. American hatred for Castro has nothing to do with
human rights but stems from his unwillingness to blindly support
the positions and actions of the U.S. American leaders claim that
the embargo is meant to “protect the freedom of the Cuban
people,” but these leaders never mention that Cubans suffer due to
this blockade. This embargo was never instituted to protect human
rights; rather, it is a tool of retribution against a man who has
steadfastly refused to allow U.S. greed to subjugate his people.
— Nicholas Miller
Instructor’s comment: When assigning the final paper for my
autumn 2003 class on the American Presidency, I did something
that typically leads students into either a state of frenzy or
paralysis: I told them to write about anything they wanted, so long
as it had to do with an American president. Eventually, the
majority of my students had to have a topic assigned to them,
whereas Nicholas Miller knew right away what he wanted to
research: the Cuban embargo. The topic is a good marriage of
presidential history and current electoral politics, and Nicholas
skillfully weaves the relevant facts about the long-standing policy
along with arguments from both sides of the political spectrum. As
a former political aide, I noticed right away that his paper goes
beyond a typical assignment and does what any stellar policy
memo should do: educate and persuade. Nicholas’s paper does
both, and I find it both enlightening and enlightened.
— Masaki Hidaka, Politics
The Cuban Embargo: An Antiquated
Measure that has Failed Cuba and Failed
the U.S.
Nicholas Miller
WRW - 30
Nicholas Miller
Throughout its history, the United States has adopted no law
that has been more useless than the Cuban embargo. The
embargo, put in place by President Kennedy in 1962, bans
all imports of Cuban goods to the United States and bars all
Americans from traveling to Cuba without special permission from
the United States government. The decision to impose the
embargo was correct in 1962, during the height of the Cuban
Missile Crisis. However, as soon as the crisis subsided, the
embargo should have been lifted. In the aftermath of the missile
crisis, embargo proponents have argued that the embargo is
necessary in order to force Cuban President Fidel Castro to adopt
democratic reforms. After more than forty years on the books, it is
abundantly clear that the embargo has done nothing to bring
democracy to Cuba. Instead, it has deprived the Cuban people of
vital economic and medicinal resources, it has allowed Castro to
blame all of Cuba’s problems on the U.S. embargo, and it has
deprived American citizens of their fundamental right to travel
where they choose. The U.S. embargo has failed our country, it
has failed our citizens, and it continues to fail the men, women,
and children in Cuba who are forced to fight poverty on a daily
basis. People around the world know that the U.S. is always
reluctant to admit that it has failed. However, for the sake of the
thousands of people who suffer under the embargo every day, U.S.
leaders must end a trade blockade that has punished innocent
people simply for the ostensible “crime” of being poor.
As mentioned above, the U.S. embargo was put in place by
President Kennedy in the aftermath of the 1962 Cuban Missile
Crisis. When Castro came to power in 1959 as a Communist, his
government began to receive large amounts of financial support
from the Soviet Union. Beginning in January of 1962, Russia
began shipping medium range nuclear missiles to Cuba, which
Castro aimed at the shores of Florida. President Kennedy
immediately objected to nuclear weapons being pointed at the
United States by Castro. He called for a naval blockade of Cuba to
prevent the Soviet Union from delivering any more missiles to
Cuba. There was an intense stand-off between Russia and the U.S.
but in the end Russia agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba.
Kennedy’s anger at Castro for pointing nuclear weapons at the U.S.
WRW - 31
The Cuban Embargo
led him to sign the Cuban embargo on March 23rd 1962, banning
“all trade with Cuba as well as imports of all goods made from or
containing Cuban materials, even if made in other countries.”1
Kennedy was entirely justified in instituting the Cuban embargo.
The U.S. had a right to cut off trade with a nation that was pointing
nuclear weapons at America’s shores. However, as soon as the
missiles were removed, the embargo should have been rescinded.
When the missiles came down, Cuba no longer posed any threat to
the U.S. or its citizens. However, hard liners within the United
States argued that Castro was a tyrant who posed a national
security threat to the United States. Embargo supporters argued
that Cuba was still receiving financial benefits from the Soviet
Union and therefore should be viewed as a potential threat to
America. As a result of American hatred of communism, the
embargo remained in place on the grounds of national security.
In 1989 the Soviet Union collapsed, which forced its leaders to
cut off financial support to Cuba. This decision caused Cuba and
its people to slip deeper into poverty. Opponents of the embargo
argued that Cuba was now a poor third-world country and no
longer posed any threat to U.S. national security. Despite this fact,
the United States strengthened the embargo on grounds that
America would not support a government that had no respect for
human rights. America’s demand that Castro respect democracy
and allow citizens to speak out against the government represented
American hypocrisy at its worst, since the U.S. has supported some
of the most violent and oppressive regimes in world history.
Before Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, Cuba was controlled by
a brutal dictator named Fulgencio Batista. Batista ruled Cuba
through fear, torture, and murder. He murdered men, women, and
children on national television for speaking out against the
government. Despite these horrific violations of human rights,
Batista was adored by the United States because he wholeheartedly
supported American economic interests in Cuba. In addition to
Batista, the U.S. has supported numerous dictatorships that have
had horrific human rights records: “Clearly, Cuban-style
democracy wouldn’t qualify as ‘free’ by most definitions. Yet
other nations with far worse human-rights records, including
Guatemala, China, Chile, and Indonesia, have received U.S.
WRW - 32
economic and political support despite their atrocities.”2 Another
quotation that reinforces American hypocrisy on this subject is as
follows: “United States-backed governments, especially in Latin
America, are notorious for abusive dictatorships, far contrary to
American doublespeak of supporting freedom and democracy.
One needs only to look at the notorious School of the Americas,
which trains and sends Latin American soldiers into countries like
El Salvador to massacre their own people to maintain U.S.
interests.”3 These two quotations illustrate that on the issue of
human rights, the U.S. speaks out of both sides of its mouth. The
U.S.’s unflinching support of leaders with deplorable human rights
records illustrates that America does not care about freedom or
democracy as long as the leader in question supports U.S. interests.
As a result of U.S. support of repressive regimes around the world,
its pretense to piety in the case of Cuba is seen as nothing more
than a hypocritical double standard brought on by the fact that
America does not like Fidel Castro.
One of the strongest arguments made in favor of the embargo
by its proponents is that Castro has done nothing positive for the
Cuban people. While U.S. leaders can point to a lack of civil and
political rights to support this argument, they are forced to admit
that Cuban citizens have more economic and social rights than
ordinary citizens in the United States and that in several ways
communism has been good for the Cuban people: “The infant
mortality rate in Cuba is one of the lowest in the world (12 per
1,000 live births). Life expectancy in Cuba far exceeds that in the
rest of Latin America (73.5 years as opposed to, for example, 64.3
years in Ecuador). The illiteracy rate has declined from 25 percent
of the population before the revolution (mid-’50s) to 4 percent in
the mid-’90s. It is important to note that all this was achieved
without the support of the U.S., the World Bank, or the
International Monetary Fund…Cuban Farm Workers now have
access to potable water, decent housing, education, and health care
at a rate almost unparalleled in the rest of Latin America.”4 This
quotation illustrates that Castro has introduced social and
economic rights that even the U.S. does not provide its citizens. In
her article entitled “Time to End Cuban Embargo,” Natalya Efros
of Princeton University sheds even greater light on the social
Nicholas Miller
WRW - 33
The Cuban Embargo
advances made in Cuba under Castro. She writes, “How can the
U.S., with its own long list of human rights violations, point a
finger at a government that has transformed a third-world country
with a history of poverty and gross economic inequalities into a
state where everyone has a standard of living above the poverty
level, an accomplishment we (the U.S.) have not yet achieved?
Although its own human rights record is far from clean, Cuba has
taken great strides in eliminating sexism and apartheid-like racism,
it has implemented universal healthcare and prescription drug
systems that put us to shame, and its education system is the best in
Latin America.”5 Efros’ remarks provide further evidence that all
of the American propaganda stating that Castro has done nothing
for his people is categorically untrue. If anything, U.S. leaders are
probably embarrassed by all that Castro has accomplished because
America has failed where he has succeeded. Reading of these
achievements forces us to wonder how much Castro and the Cuban
people could accomplish if the United States was providing the
Cuban people with greater resources to succeed. How much is the
U.S. suppressing Cuba’s potential by robbing it of vital resources?
The final argument used by advocates of the Cuban embargo is
that the blockade is going to make Cuba so economically desperate
that Castro will be forced to adopt democratic reforms. However,
this belief has been rejected by over forty years of evidence. Since
the embargo was put in place, Castro has not adopted one
diplomatic reform. He has not allowed free elections, he has
cracked down on political dissent, and he has increased
government censorship. There is no evidence to suggest that
Castro will adopt reforms now, considering that for the past forty
years he has not adopted even one. Instead of forcing Castro to
open up Cuba to democracy, the embargo has merely caused the
Cuban people to sink deeper into debt and has allowed Castro to
blame all of Cuba’s problems on the U.S. and the embargo. What
is perhaps most ironic is that while U.S. leaders condemn Castro
for his blatant disregard for freedom and law, the U.S. is breaking
the law every day by keeping the embargo in place: “Restricting
the exportation and sale of medicine and food is a violation of
international humanitarian law and has been condemned by almost
every international body, including [the] Organization of American
WRW - 34
States, which normally backs U.S. policies. The United States is
alone in its hard-line attack of the Cuban people. No other country
honors the restrictions set by the US, and in 1997, the European
Union went so far as to bring up charges against the US for
violating WTO rules.”6 Following the law, it would seem, is yet
another instance of the U.S. having a double standard. American
leaders take offense when Fidel Castro does not respect the U.S.’s
definition of right and wrong, but these same leaders openly and
willingly disobey and disrespect international law when it suits
U.S. interest. The Organization of the American States is not the
only international organization that has condemned the U.S.
embargo against Cuba: “On November 7, 1997 the UN approved
its sixth consecutive resolution against the blockade. There were
143 nations in favor of lifting the blockade, 3 against, and 17
abstentions.”7 This quotation illustrates that in the case of Cuba,
the U.S. is willing to make a mockery of international law and
expectations. The international community can only hope that one
day, U.S. leaders will begin to respect the Cuban people’s welfare
enough that they abandon a policy that has been counter-effective
on so many fronts.
Throughout recent years, the U.S. has seen the emergence of a
strong group in America advocating the repeal of the Cuban
embargo. In May of 2002, a bipartisan group of forty-eight former
members of the U.S. Senate sent an open letter to President Bush
and Congress arguing that the embargo should be ended: “Our
policy makes no sense. It’s hurting the people of Cuba and taking
jobs away from the United States. Meanwhile, it fails to bring any
change in Cuba…This policy once may have made sense but no
longer serves the purposes for which it was imposed. The interests
of the Cuban people would best be served by an American
presence”8. This statement is not only important due to its content,
but is also very important because it was written and signed by
forty-eight Democrats and Republicans who used to serve in one of
the highest bodies of American government. Present politicians
should take their former colleagues’ words to heart in deciding
whether to continue a policy that has negatively affected countless
innocent people.
The Cuban embargo was a policy put in place at a specific time
Nicholas Miller
WRW - 35
The Cuban Embargo
to serve a specific purpose. President Kennedy believed that it was
a legitimate response to a dictator who posed a nuclear threat to
this country. However, the embargo served its purpose. The
missiles came down, and the embargo should have fallen then as
well. Instead of being reversed, the embargo has stayed in place
for forty years, crippling the Cuban economy and inflicting a
crushing blow on the Cuban people. Embargo proponents argue
that Castro does not respect democracy and therefore the U.S.
should not support his regime. However, U.S. aided countless
regimes with far worse human rights records than that of Cuba
under Fidel Castro. As such, the Cuban embargo represents a
double standard in American foreign policy. The U.S. will aid any
country that caters to American interests no matter what their
actions or positions on human rights. However, if a foreign leader
has the courage to stand up to American imperialism, the U.S. will
use every tool in its arsenal to destroy that leader’s country and
citizens. The Cuban people have accomplished so much despite
enduring a forty year blockade by the world’s most powerful
country. The embargo and its proponents are denying ordinary
Cubans a greater opportunity to better themselves through
normalized trade relations. The embargo must be reversed as soon
as possible for the benefit of both America and Cuba. Only when
the embargo is ended will the U.S. be able to state that it respects
and values not only Cubans, but the sanctity of all human life.
Footnotes
1 http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/funfacts/embargo.htm
2 http://www.yaleherald.com/archive/xxvii/1999.01.22/opinion/p10remer.html
3 http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2002/09/12/opinion/5279.shtml
4 http://www.yaleherald.com/archive/xxvii/1999.01.22/opinion/p10remer.html
5 http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2002/09/12/opinion/5279.shtml
6 http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2002/09/12/opinion/5279.shtml
7 http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/Cuba/other.html
8 http://www.cubafoundation.org/Releases/
Former%20Senators%20Oppose%20Cuban%20...
WRW - 36
The Sand Crab
Perrine Sarchet
Writer’s comment: “The Sand Crab” is about my younger brother,
Ty. When I wrote it, Ty was applying to college; I could only
imagine the experiences waiting for him in the very near future.
The idea of my baby “Sand Crab” brother growing up was a
subject so emotional and so moving that I felt the need to write
about it. This piece emerged from Brian Komei Dempster’s
Writing Seminar I as part of our creative nonfiction unit. I want to
stress, especially to Ty and my family, that creative nonfiction is
exactly that: creative. And although these experiences really did
happen, they are just seen through my own personal lens. I thank
Brian so much for helping me to “re-envision” the piece, to bring
“The Sand Crab” to life, to articulate what was screaming to be
said.
—Perrine Sarchet
Instructor’s comment: This piece began as a short response in
which Perrine created a character sketch of a family member. Her
piece evolved into a rich portrait of the complicated relationship
between she and her brother. Using water as a symbol, Perrine
pays homage to her family history, enacting the intimacy and
distance she and Ty experience as they grow up. I admire the
travel through time and place, the poetry in the language. And
while the piece is breathtaking in its evocation of Hawaii’s
landscape, it contains a depth that goes far beyond its “sparkling
surface”: a song about the bittersweet nature of memory, the gaps
between nostalgia and reality, the intricate nuances of sibling love.
—Brian Komei Dempster, Rhetoric and Composition
WRW - 37
It is raining in San Francisco today. As I sit at my desk, I can
barely make out the tall, spiky spire of City Hall and the
glowing embers of the streetlights outside. When it rains here,
it seems like everything—the city, the school, and the mood I’m
in—is shrouded in a damp, misty grayness that extinguishes all the
warmth around me. On days like this one, I really miss home. I
think of the beating sun, the lively beach, my laughing friends, my
big golden dog, and my little brother, all with a longing that causes
me to shiver in this cold, dim dorm room and miserably jerk the
rattling window shut.
On days like this one, I miss even the rain in Hawaii. The
winter there is drowned by sudden and furious downpours that are
so different from this constant frigid mist that penetrates San
Francisco for weeks on end. Winter rain in Hawaii is violent and
torrential, usually only attacking at night, for only a matter of a few
intense hours, and then retreating, leaving behind green dewy
mountainsides and shiny clean cars. When I think of rain like that,
angry, intense rain, I am always reminded of my brother. I sit here,
hugging my fleece blanket close around me, and I think of him and
my first experience of Hawaii’s violent rain.
We were both in grade school, young enough to be completely
unconcerned with looking cool and still very anxious about being
yelled at by mom. We had just eaten one of her experimental
dinners, which back then largely consisted of some breaded meat
substance, rice, kim chee and creamed corn on the side. She used
to buy canned creamed corn as if she were stockpiling for a
hurricane, and that night the storm outside nearly felt like one.
While we slowly prodded our food, we could hear the roar of
the rain outside as it bore down in angry waves, pelting our
seemingly impenetrable house. Large, stinging droplets smacked
the sliding glass door to the dining room. Warmly sheltered inside,
we stared into the glass at the bubbly, warped reflections of our
warm, dry selves.
My brother, after hastily sliding his barely eaten dinner off his
plate and into the trash, flung open the glass door and was blasted
by the cool night air. He stepped out onto the patio and flicked on
the blinking fluorescent overhead light, exposing our dog Sheba, a
blond retriever mix, huddled in a decrepit, brown, fur-covered
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velveteen easy chair. I followed him out into the chilly damp air
and we both hugged Sheba and felt her warmth all balled up in the
depths of the dusty old chair. Now he had caught the contagious
energy of the rain and gave it back to me. We tiptoed over the cold
cement and inspected the rain gutter, which was shooting out water
and debris like a fire hose. We washed our feet in its shocking
coolness as the rain bore down over our sleepy little valley and
made a marsh of our backyard.
I can’t remember why or how it happened, but our numb, wet
feet inspired us to jump in and out of the waterfall that was rushing
from the gutter on the corner of the roof. Soon we were mock-showering,
fully-clothed, in the rain gutter’s spew, taking turns—
one of us shivering under the smacking droplets as the other
danced spastically under the stream of rainwater. We laughed
maniacally, as if we were alive in nature for the very first time. The
rain was the coldest we’d ever felt. The grass glistened blackish-green
in the cool, blue darkness. Our feet sunk sumptuously into
the new mud. We took turns wondering, “Haha, where’s mom?
She’s going to be mad at uuuusss!”
When we looked back at our mom, who watched in disbelief
from the doorway, it suddenly seemed as if we were out there
forever, way past the point when she should have told us, “Get
your butts back in the house!” Of course, she eventually did, but
she mercifully waited until after the rain had died down, and the
gutter was downgraded from a raging waterfall to a trickling
stream. Mom wrapped the two of us in towels, and we shivered our
way back into the glowing warmth of the dining room, leaving
Sheba to fend off the rain herself. I wiped my fogged tortoise-shell-
framed glasses and wriggled uncomfortably in my scratchy
drenched polo shirt and soaking Bermuda shorts. My brother
quickly stripped down naked in the living room and bolted for the
warmth of the shower.
I sit here now and wonder if this night washes over him, as it
does over me. Does he think of me during those torrential
downpours now? It seems so long ago, but I still feel that if I went
home tomorrow, it could happen again without a second thought.
Thinking of him causes me to look at the picture of us that sits on
my desk, as I often do when I feel homesick. He was probably
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three when it was taken, and I about five—we are standing side by
side on a rocky beach, our backs to the camera. It looks to me now
that I was showing him the water, guiding him toward it, but
protecting him from it at the same time. Kind of like he did with
me a few years later in the rain. In the picture, I am carrying a
yellow bucket in one hand, holding his hand with the other. Both
his fists are in balls.
When my brother was little he would not venture into the
ocean past his waist. Instead, he sat on the sand burying my mom
and wearing his fluorescent green elastic-waist shorts with the
mesh lining that always poked out, so my mom nicknamed him
“Sand Crab.” His real name is Ty, after no one in particular. But
when he was in little league, with his tiny chin jutting out from the
broad bill of his cap, he would insist that he was named after Ty
Cobb, incredible fielder and legendary asshole. My brother revered
Cobb’s skill on the diamond and his attitude toward life and other
players. He wanted to spike the catcher as he was sliding home. He
wanted to glower in the pitcher’s face and then smack one out of
the park. He wanted to live boldly and aggressively without
wondering if people liked him or not.
Sometimes now, when he deftly guns a guy out at third base or
calls my mom “a dumb-ass” to her face, I wonder if he really did
live up to his namesake’s legend. I recall how afraid we were of
getting in trouble for dancing in the rain that night and can see how
much has changed. My mom often calls me from home,
distraughtly trying to make sense of my brother, trying to figure
out the best way to handle him when he comes back hours past his
curfew, or swears at my stepfather, or screams at his ex-girlfriend
over the phone. She relays snippets of what he says to her, “Shut
up, mom, just leave me alone.” To my stepfather, “I don’t have to
fucking listen to you.” Or to his girlfriend, “No, no, please, don’t
hang up!”
I can understand his anger, his hurt. I can tell what reaction he
is trying to get from her, from me, from everyone. I know that
unlike me, he only lets his emotions show when he wants them to.
I know that he is a smooth lake one minute, the next, a crashing
tsunami. His fury and emotion are a bigger, louder reflection of my
own. I try to explain these things to my mom, try to explain where
The Sand Crab
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he is coming from and where he is going, but she can’t see it. She
only hears the angry swear words. Sees his red, crying face. And
worries. I guess she doesn’t understand because although she was
there right behind us, she was standing in the doorway while we
danced in the rain. I guess that for her, it’s not like looking into the
slightly warped mirror where the rain fell, or the glass frame of this
photo, now collecting dust. Looking at the picture on my desk,
though things are so different now, I find it not hard to believe that
he was once this tiny blond-headed Ty, standing firm-footed next
to his sister, a safe distance away from the water. But he is not
afraid of the ocean anymore.
I remember us as 9 and 10-year-olds, going to the beach on the
North Shore during our summer vacation. It was always an all-day
adventure to travel there, a whole hour away from our side of the
tiny island. We would pack coolers, big bags of beach necessities,
changes of clothes, and would always be sound asleep in the
backseat by the time we made it to the beach. During the summer,
we would always go to the same spot, Waimea Bay, a beach
famous for crushing waves and rocks high enough to make your
stomach swoop as you leapt from them. I was always wary of the
strong current at Waimea and the steep shelf that was hidden under
the flat, sparkling surface. The shelf was made by the massive
winter waves that came and sucked out all the sand. I would only
cautiously venture a few feet off shore and snorkel around with the
tiny silver fish, chasing them as they darted in all directions. But
when I felt the current pulling at my fins and the cold water
rushing around my legs, I knew that I was not strong enough to
venture that far and came in.
One day, Ty, the Sand Crab, was no longer sitting on the shore.
As I squinted in the blazing sun I could see that he was climbing a
large pile of lava rock that jutted out into deep water of the bay.
He was steadily making his way past throngs of tall, tanned locals,
draped on different perches on the way up to the peak. I saw him
at the top of the rock pile and my stomach swooped as I watched
his skinny, erect body plunge smoothly into the dark blue ocean. I
held my breath for him, as if me holding my breath would show
him what to do in the chilly, blue underwater depths, so deep that
his toes could never stretch to scrape the bottom. But as I saw his
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wet, seal-like head break the surface, I knew that I was more afraid
for him than he was for himself. That day, I realized that my
brother, while sitting on the sand, was not content to be the Sand
Crab while his big sister was a little fish in the big ocean. He used
that time spent sitting there to prepare himself and when he was
ready, there were no small steps into shallow waters, only one
giant plunge with no looking back. I know now that this is
probably how it always will be. And that I can only sit on the
shore, holding my breath as I wait to see what new depths and
experiences he will discover.
And although Ty has gotten taller, I feel that my little brother
has grown much more in depth than in height. He is delving into
uncharted waters. He is on his way to college, he is suffering from
a broken heart, he is saying goodbye to home, he is trying to work
out how he will still play ball four years from now. He is getting
old. Or rather growing up. Though the term growing up always
strikes me as something a tree does, or process that a skyscraper
undergoes, never something that happens to a person over time. I
feel that as he lost his fear of the ocean and his need to hold his
sister’s hand, he took on a sort of ocean-like depth himself and
would never be satisfied just sitting on the sand again.
Sometimes I can’t help but think of him as a shaggy blonde
nine-year-old standing on the pitcher’s mound, biting his nails. I
am not used to hearing him tell some girl, “I’ll never forget what
you did to me.” I am not used to the idea of him in college,
playing baseball, drinking beers. I am not used to him having
newer, cooler, nicknames that I don’t know about. Now that I am
here in San Francisco, so far away from his every move, I need to
remind myself that what he does and what I do will always
remained linked. We will have always swam in the same big bay,
the same torrential downpour, the same uterus.
We have the same parents, the same dry sense of humor, the
same big horse teeth. We went to the same schools, had the same
friends, ate the same meals at the same time each day. Our pasts
are so intimately linked that I know there will be never be anyone
who knows exactly who I am and where I come from better than
him. Maybe that is why I find it so hard to break that sameness,
that identical history now. Maybe that is why it is so hard for me
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to think of him as a person of his own, not as my brother, but as a
deep, intense human being, plunging fearlessly into life. Maybe
that is why, as I think of him now and I look at the picture of him
and me on the beach, I have tears in my eyes and can’t stop them
from streaming down my cheeks.
I know we will always be able to laugh at the Simpsons and at
mom together, that we will always gag at the sight of creamed
corn, and that we will always look like slightly different versions
of the same person. I can call him right now and ask him to do his
impression of Police Chief Wiggum and he would without batting
an eye. I also know that my brother and I will take on our own
individual personalities, find our own friends, have our own bad
food experiences, and create our own inside jokes as our nearly
identical histories fork, and we embark into two strikingly different
directions. I can only wonder who we will become, both together
and separately, as we traverse our own unique paths over the next
few years and delve into newer, deeper, less familiar waters, with
the other watching, just a speck on the shore. I am sad to see him
grow up; I don’t even feel ready myself. But I know that no matter
how deeply we go plunging into strange new depths, the other will
be there at the surface to share in the triumph. When I graduate
from college, he will be there with a hug and a lei. When he throws
his first shutout, I will be cheering and screaming, if only over the
phone. When I get married, he will be there smiling proudly,
cheering me on. And whether we are at the highest of highs or the
lowest of lows, the other will be the breath of warm fresh air,
waiting right at the surface. And right now, in my tiny San
Francisco dorm room, this thought makes the rain outside seem
less dreary, and I can smile proudly at my own warped face,
reflected in the window.
Perrine Sarchet
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Writer’s comment: It took me weeks to write this paper—not that
all that time was necessary. It could have been a much more well-written
and introspective essay, I feel, if I hadn’t wasted so much
time. At each turn in my research, I found myself engrossed in the
material. I would go into the periodicals at the library to pull a
copy of Science, and end up sitting down on the floor between the
stacks and reading half the volume. I am fascinated by our relation-ship
with the environment. Given the opportunity, I would have
happily written dozens of pages on climate change alone. Albeit
that this assignment was for Ethics class, it took quite an effort on
my part not to get carried away. I dedicate the following thoughts
to every environmentalist who’s ever been called a “whacko.” I
thoroughly enjoyed getting all these emotions down on paper.
— Connor Narciso
Natural Capital
Connor Narciso
Instructor’s comment: Each semester my Ethics students are
instructed to create a final paper topic from any subject we cover in
the course, from abortion to animal rights. This task is
overwhelming for some; for others, it is simply another creative
and intellectual challenge. Mr. Narciso’s essay is an excellent
example of the latter. His essay presents a reflection on the ideas in
Aldo Leopold’s article, “The Land Ethic,” and Bill Devall and
George Sessions’ article, “Deep Ecology.” Both articles outline the
importance of creating a new set of values relating to the
environment. The movement from anthropocentrism to
ecocentrism depends on the development of a new appreciation for
the land and the natural world. In its introduction, Narciso’s essay
creatively presents the real obstacles that we may face in an
attempt to manifest that appreciation in our lives. He then artfully
introduces not only the predominant issues in the environmental
justice movement, but weaves into his arguments the ideas of
prominent economist, Milton Friedman, and philosophers Leopold
and Mill.
— Katherine Black, Philosophy Department
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Connor Narciso
Earlier this year three friends and I packed our backpacks and
set out on foot, up the coast from Santa Barbara. With no
particular destination in mind, we followed the beaches and
the nearby railroad tracks north until nightfall. After finding a
quiet, secluded beach, we settled down under a large tree and fell
asleep to the hypnotic rhythm of the ocean break. In the morning,
reluctant to retrace the 20 miles we had covered the previous day,
we hiked up to highway 101, and hitched a ride back to Santa
Barbara. Once home and recounting our brief trip with each other,
it struck me how legally irresponsible our innocent hike had been.
Within fifteen minutes of embarking, we were escorted off a large
golf course for trespassing. (There was no convenient way around
it.) Shortly after, several construction workers informed us that it
was illegal to hike on the tracks. We had gone fishing off the cliffs
for our dinner, which was illegal without a license. We built a fire
to cook and stay warm, which is illegal on most California
beaches. And in order to get home, we broke the law one final time
by hitchhiking. Now I suppose, when considered individually, each
of these laws serves legitimate purposes. But in combination with
one another, it’s hard not to feel as if we’re being prevented from
experiencing the world outside of the suburbs.
The truth is that—whether for reasons of legality,
inconvenience, or sheer ignorance—we are losing touch with the
planet from which we came, and on which we all depend. No, it is
not necessary, nor recommended, to spend our lives living in the
woods in order to appreciate nature. But there is a level of respect
that one cannot reach until he or she has placed his or her frail
human body at the mercy of natural phenomena. And it is telling
how many broken laws were necessary to escape conventions
designed to encourage staying home and shopping on the internet.
Today we are faced with looming environmental crises, at a time in
which our urban lives are becoming ever more detached from their
natural roots. Gone are the times when our resources could be
treated as boundless, and our carelessness void of consequences.
And like a delicate food chain, the issue of environmentalism is
hardly a closed system, but interlinked to an array of
circumstances. Because all areas of life depend upon the
environment, it is impossible to approach without considering
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several social, political, and economic factors. The fundamental
changes in environmental ethics that are necessary will require
reconstruction of attitudes in each of theses three areas.
Environmental justice is easy to ignore, because we rarely are
forced to witness its repercussions. But it will not go away, and
without immediate attention, will likely become the most serious
dilemma to ever face humankind.
Civilizations rooted in a deep respect for nature have existed
from time immemorial, though their numbers have dwindled
markedly in recent historical memory. For most ancient tribes,
environmentalism was not a political “issue”; it was a way of life,
an ideology on which routine decisions were based. Humans were
consciously connected to the earth. In a sense, the land was
included in the moral community. The Haida people of the Pacific
Northwest, for example, “refer to whales and ravens as their
‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ and to fish and trees as the finned and tree
people.”1 The social contract cast a much wider net, affording
plants and animals with levels of dignity. The earth was more than
the origin of sustenance, it was worshipped as sacred.
Deep in the heart of nature’s bosom, some native tribes
continue to live according to the ethical codes of their early
predecessors, but the simple lives of generations past have been
rapidly abated by recent accomplishments in production and
technology. The human race has succeeded in overcoming the
perilous, day-by-day struggle against nature in which our ancestors
toiled. Industrialized countries have the capacity to feed, clothe,
and medically treat their inhabitants at levels above and beyond
those of necessity. Granted that not all humans have been afforded
such benefits, many have adjusted to lives of luxury and excess.
We’ve crossed the finish line in the race to prosperity, yet we
continue to sprint faster into the unknown, and our sole source of
natural capital now lies at the mercy of our collective will. This
awkward case of role-reversal, in which the planet lies virtually
defenseless, is a very recent development, one that no species has
ever faced. There are few ethical precedents available to us, and
even fewer which suggest that the quality of human life take a back
seat to environmental justice. However, we appear to be facing a
crossroads at which we must choose between two paths: a new
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Connor Narciso
breed of environmental ethics, or a crash course with harsh,
unforeseen realities. Awaiting our decision, the fate of the planet
hangs in the balance.
Recently, on a class fieldtrip, young students in Minnesota
happened upon a bizarre discovery. Frogs, toads and salamanders
were found with gruesome deformities, ranging from missing eyes
to additional pairs of legs growing from the stomach. Scientists
immediately began to investigate. The abnormalities were not
isolated, but were eventually recorded in over 60 species, found in
46 states.2 Several possible causes have been identified, including
UV-ray damage, pollution, and parasites. Each potential cause
shares a common root: human activity. We are an “exterminator
species,” as one scientist has put it, and how we live is distorting
and destroying life on our planet.3 The natural forestry we destroy
and the waste and chemicals we inject back into the air, land and
sea are altering the delicate balance of life on earth. National
Geographic magazine reported in February of 1999 that “some
50% of the world’s flora and fauna could be on a path to extinction
within a hundred years. And everything is affected: fish, birds,
insects, plants, and mammals.” Some estimate that 11% of all bird
species are on the brink of extinction. Conservation biologist Stuart
Pimm insists, “It’s not just species on islands or in rain forests or
just birds or big charismatic mammals. It’s everything and it’s
everywhere…It’s a worldwide epidemic of extinctions.” 4 Not
since a meteor slammed into Mexico 65 million years ago has life
been faced with such bleak prospects. And this time our problems
are not hurtling through space somewhere; they’re embedded in
our way of life.
The causes of biodiversity loss are innumerable, and it would
take countless pages to explore them all in detail. Instead, it’s
appropriate that the largest, most irreversible of them be addressed
briefly. Modern global climate change is an emergency not
exclusive to a specific locality, or some species of toad, but for all
life on earth. “Modern climate change is dominated by human
influences,” reports the journal Science, “which are now large
enough to exceed the bounds of natural variability. The main
source of global climate change is human-induced changes in
atmospheric composition.”5 The by-products of energy production
WRW - 47
are primarily responsible for the artificial fluctuations among
greenhouse gasses. The lifeblood of modern energy production is
cheap oil, which is being consumed so rapidly that it will likely
begin to run out within most of our lifetimes. Some of its possible
replacements—coal, natural gas—would continue the risky cycle
of climate change, until they in turn are exhausted. No one is sure
what will happen to the planet as a result.6 The earth now exists in
what scientists call a metastable state: not too hot and not too
cold—thus suitable for life.7 Perturbations in atmospheric makeup
could tip the scales in either direction, with unpredictable effects.
The potential impacts on the biosphere, in the professionally calm
words of Science: “Quite disruptive.”8
How did we reach this point? Among past philosophers and
social thinkers, the possibility of the planet’s demise probably
received precious little attention, and understandably so—the
impact of human activity upon the environment had not yet
reached critical levels. Global population in 1700 was
approximately 600 million. (It has since increased tenfold.)9 The
highly powerful mechanisms of industry were centuries away.
Under these conditions, Adam Smith produced a philosophical
manifesto with lasting impact in the 21st century. He summarizes
his allegiance to the “invisible hand” of the market as follows:
As every individual, therefore, endeavors as much as he can to employ
his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that
industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual
necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great
as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public
interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it…10
The purpose of this essay is not to discredit Smith’s economic
theories. By all indications his theory of individualism has proven
successful in raising the “annual revenue of society” within freely
operating marketplaces. However, the individualism to which he
refers excludes intentions to promote the “public interest.” It is
safe to assume that Smith would have expanded his indifference to
public interest to include indifference to the environment. We no
longer live amidst the perceived natural abundance of the
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Connor Narciso
eighteenth century. Self-interest may guide us only so far before a
“tragedy of the commons” becomes inevitable.
Smith’s appeals to the virtues of self-interest have been echoed
among his followers, most notably—for his influence upon modern
American economics—Milton Friedman. On issues related to
environmental protection, Friedman extended Smith’s work to its
(il)logical conclusion: that the “market will stop us” from
compromising the health of the planet “through the price
mechanism.”11 Once again it is unnecessary, in Friedman’s opinion,
for the average consumer to even be aware of the potential
consequences of his/her actions upon the environment. Instead, the
market will “place limits on itself,” effectively saving us from
ourselves. Friedman uses oil as an example:
When resources are really limited prices go up, but the price of oil has
gone down and down. Suppose oil became scarce: the price would go
up, and people would start using other energy sources. In a proper
system the market can take care of the problem.12
Only the market hasn’t been taking care of the problem. The
external costs—long term problems unforeseen by short term
market fixes— associated with oil consumption are unaccounted
for, even covered up in some instances. And alternative energy
poses risks equal in potential harm. For example, if coal or natural
gas happened to fill oil’s void, we would remain dependant upon
an environmentally dirty energy source. Meanwhile, climate
change would remain a non-issue for oil companies as they
managed a rapid shift to these substitute fossil fuels.
The obvious problem with Friedman’s argument is that, had
his predictions been accurate, there would currently be no
environmental crisis. The genetically mutated frogs are already
upon us. What is ExxonMobil doing about it? Friedman explains:
“Do corporate executives, providing they stay within the law, have
responsibilities...other than to make as much money for their
stockholders as possible? My answer is, no, they do not.”13 In fact,
ExxonMobil is addressing climate change…by attempting to
discredit its existence. In 2001 the corporation successfully lobbied
for the removal of prominent U.S. climatologist Dr. Robert Watson
from his five year post as the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel
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on Climate Change. Dr. Watson had taken the unfavorable position
of concurring with the National Academy of Sciences that “most
[global] warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to
human activities.”14 Exxon also contributes over a million dollars a
year to organizations who “question global warming,” while
simultaneously refusing to pay damages for the Valdez oil spill of
15 years earlier.15
This trend, in which corporations spend billions of dollars a
year on phony research, is cited by Professor Kristin Shrader
Frechette of the University of Notre Dame as the primary
impediment to environmental justice. Every year scientists receive
funding to conduct legitimate research—research that appears in
scholarly journals such as Science and Nature. Simultaneously,
corporations are spending three times as much to fund their own
directed research.16 Naturally, the research is carried out in such a
manner that the results will assist in the desirability of the
corporation’s product, its detriment to the planet notwithstanding.
The results are distributed by think tanks—also funded by the same
corporations—and appear throughout the media. Full information
is a prerequisite of Friedman’s free-market utopia, but here the
knowledge pool is clearly tainted with the piss of corporate
propaganda.
Realizing that our economic doctrines are incompatible with
global sustainability leads us to question our relationship with the
environment. Unfortunately it is human survival which prompts
the discussion. All too often our rationales for environmental
protection bear a striking resemblance to the selfish theories that
drove us to crisis in the first place. Nature is considered a
commodity, worth protecting only for the sake of our comfort. The
reason, we are told, that the four-legged frogs are so frightening, is
that the embryos of amphibians are unusually fragile, often
reacting easily to unnatural stimuli. The mutations are therefore
considered a precursor to what could potentially develop among
mammals (read humans) in the future.17 Our selfish concerns take
precedence, and the frogs themselves are, apparently, of no
intrinsic worth. This approach to the environment is termed
“anthropocentrism”—viewing nature strictly “in terms of its values
to humans.”18 Aldo Leopold, professor and former U.S. Forest
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Connor Narciso
Service wildlife manager, contends that “a system of conservation
based solely on economic self-interest is hopelessly lopsided. It
tends to ignore, and thus eliminate, many elements in the land
community that lack commercial value…but are essential to its
healthy functioning.”19 Under the supervision of outdated,
Friedman-esque policies, nature exists as natural capital, a resource
at our disposal. And even if, in accordance with Friedman’s claims
and against all odds, the market were able to miraculously avert
impending danger and preserve the delicate order of the
environment, there’s still something missing. Nature deserves
more.
Environmental justice is not reached simply through the
absence of harm, but rather through the presence of moral
intentions. The theory of “ecocentrism” achieves this goal.
Ecocentrism places humans in concert with, not in domination
over, the earth.20 It is quite difficult, as an average American, to
step back and appreciate our place in the ecosphere. Social
concerns, economic duress, and material pursuits ensure that our
attention is fixated elsewhere. But pause for a moment and
imagine. The biosphere exists in an intricate harmony unmatched
by any mechanical system. As a species, we used to be a part of
this harmony. Our survival used to depend upon specific forces of
nature. The disruption of buffalo migration could potentially erase
a civilization. We’ve risen above this vulnerability. We now prey
upon every corner of the biosphere from our comfortable perch
atop a pyramid of technological prowess. But our safety is an
illusion, a convenience only realized over the last few centuries.
For millions of years prior to our existence, planet earth cultivated
fascinating forms of life from mountain tops to ocean floors. We
cannot survive without our planet, but the earth will continue to
flourish with life without us. To escape your petty anxieties, and to
allow all of this information to permeate your psyche, if but for an
instant, is to understand the sheer necessity for environmental
justice. “It is inconceivable to me,” writes Leopold, “that an ethical
relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for
land, and a high regard for its value.”21 We are products of this land
and its magnificence, and, as humans, we have the unique ability to
appreciate this.
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Given the nature of environmentalism, we cannot place faith in
our politicians, or in any charismatic figurehead. Our conservative
leadership loves to canonize liberal philosophers, given, of course,
that they’re dead. The works of Christ, Thoreau, Ghandi, and King
are espoused with glowing admiration and lend support to the
environmental cause, yet politicians are frightened by the prospect
of their implementation. Indeed, our current administration has
gone to great political lengths to avoid facing up to
environmentalism. In 2002, the White House removed mention of
global warming from a report on air pollution. Then in 2003, the
EPA’s Draft Report on the Environment—declared as
“comprehensive” and “sophisticated” by its authors—was again
stripped of any reference to climate change. Attempts were made
by the Bush administration to “remove the scientifically
indisputable statement that ‘[c]limate change has global
consequences for human health and the environment.’”22
Meanwhile, conservative groups in Texas have succeeded in
editing the science curriculum in the public school system.
Environmental science texts have been modified, even rejected in
one case, for their “un-American” discussion of pollution and
urban sprawl.23 It’s one thing to ignore a problem. It’s an entirely
different thing to make efforts to cover it up altogether. The hostile
opposition which environmentalists encounter in the public arena
is a testament to America’s addiction to such luxurious myths.
Although the significance of environmental justice is equal
across global demographics, it is—in its most raw form—a
struggle within the individual. John Stuart Mill, in perfecting his
“Greatest Happiness Principle,” reclassified pleasure into two
categories: higher and lower. Mill concluded that “those who are
equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating” the
two types of pleasure “do give a most marked preference to the
manner of existence which employs their higher faculties.”24 This
duality, between intellectual rewards and the quick, superficial fix
of a recent purchase, has become the defining conflict of our lives,
whether we realize it or not. An unfavorable feature of capitalism
is that it preys upon the base pleasures, the pleasures that Mill,
ironically in our age of mass consumption, likened to those of a
pig. Behold The Bachelor, the Big Mac, the Hummer H2—seldom
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Connor Narciso
will a corporation show hesitation in the race for the lowest
denominator. Our battle is one in opposition to a new age of
manufactured desires, the result of a mental environment littered
with commercials and billboards. And today, our salvation may lie
in the resolve of ordinary citizens. Milton Friedman reminds us
that “people responsible for pollution are consumers, not
producers. They create, as it were, a demand for pollution.”25
While Friedman conveniently ignores the fact that corporations
routinely lie, cheat, and steal at the expense of the environment, he
illustrates an important point: Without our reckless pursuit of
excess, the corporations who now poison streams and belch smoke
would be rendered impotent.
As a political issue, the environmental crisis offers no
traditional solution. In a capitalist democracy, it comes as second
nature to assume that any problem can be solved with the right
amount of money. In this case, however, the problem is immune to
any tax hike or appropriation. Sacrificing our lifestyles is our only
option. To many of us this sounds suspiciously like sacrificing our
happiness, and this flawed logic is the root of the environmental
crisis. If, in fact, personal happiness were the price of
environmental protection, then we would truly be facing a dilemma
of epic proportions. In such a case, resistance to environmentalism
would be defensible on moral grounds. The truth, despite adamant
objections from the status quo, is that wealth and material
possessions are no measure of happiness. We’ve all heard the
cliches, yet materialism remains the unwritten law that we live by.
The virtues of a modest life are well known and have been
exhorted by great thinkers across civilizations. Epicurus pleaded
that “if we do not possess many, we may enjoy the few in the
genuine persuasion that those have the sweetest pleasure in luxury
who least need it.”26 When we approach happiness in relative
terms, we’re destined for disappointment. It’s very simple. Look
around one final time, and observe your neighbors, rich and poor.
Virtue is not exclusive to the former, nor is vice to the latter. The
higher aspirations in life transcend the income gap. Epictitus, in his
appeal to humility, encapsulates the solution: “Ask not that events
should happen as you will, but let your will be that events should
happen as they do, and you shall have peace.”27
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Subtle changes within all of our lives can repair the damage
being waged upon the earth. As moral agents in an economic
setting, it is time to abandon our dependence upon some of our free
market theories. These myths have been embraced and propagated
based not upon their merits, but by elite opportunists whose
interest they immediately serve. On a more emotional level, the
most rewarding effects of environmental ethics are the lessons it
teaches us about our own happiness. No closure awaits our
constant manipulation of the environment to suit our desires.
Instead our desires should naturally align themselves with the
balance of nature. As consumers, we’re trapped in a cyclical
endeavor to fill an emotional void. And with each new product we
purchase, another void is born. As we learn to live more
responsibly with our planet, we slowly shake loose of these trivial
concerns. There is something profoundly philosophical about this
harmonious correlation. It is the essence of ecocentrism.
Notes
1 Michael Malloy, Experiencing the World’s Religions, 2nd Ed. (Mountain View,
CA: Mayfield Publishing, 2002), 35.
2 Andrew Blaustein, and Pieter T.J. Johnson, “Explaining Frog Deformities,”
Scientific American, February 2003, 60.
3 Virginia Morell, “The Sixth Extinction,” National Geographic, February,
1999, 43.
4 Morell, 45.
5 Thomas Karl and Kevin Trenberth, “Modern Global Climate Change,”
Science, 5 December 2003, 1719.
6 David Goodstein, Out of Gas (New York: Norton, 2004), 15.
7 Goodstein, 75.
8 Karl and Trenberth, 1719.
9 Joel Cohen, “Human Population in the Next Half Century,” Science, 14
November 2003, 1172.
10 Robert L. Nadeau, The Wealth of Nature (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2003), 7-8.
11 Nadeau, 188.
12 Nadeau, 188.
13 William Greider, The Soul of Capitalism (New York: Simon & Schuster,
2003), 37.
14 U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, Politics
and Science in the Bush Administration (Washington DC; GPO, 2003).
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15 Ashley Shelby, “Whatever it Takes,” The Nation, 5 April 2004, 16.
16 Kristin Shrader Frechette, Public Lecture. Philosophy Department, University
of San Francisco.
17 Blaustein and Johnson, 64.
18 Judith A. Boss, Analyzing Moral Issues (Boston: McGraw Hill Higher
Education, 2002), 622.
19 Boss, 623-624.
20 Boss, 622.
21 Boss, 624.
22 House of Representatives, 24-25.
23 Dan Oko, “Rewriting Texas Texts,” Mother Jones, July/August 2003, 17.
24 Boss, 50.
25 Milton and Rose Friedman, Free To Choose (New York: Harcourt, Brace,
Jovanovich, 1979), 215.
26 Ethics class handout.
27 Ethics class handout
Connor Narciso
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Metaphoric Truth
Pepper Austin
Writer’s comment: In Brian Komei Dempster’s Modern American
Poetry class, we read Wallace Stevens, an assignment which did
not thrill me in the beginning. Before this class I had only been
exposed to Stevens’ earlier poetry, and though I found it beautiful,
it never interested me. However, as we began to discuss Stevens’
later poetry, I was intrigued by the way he questioned language,
truth, and the role of the poet. “Of Modern Poetry” is a perfect
example of Stevens’ constant struggle to come to grips with the
impossibility of truth in language, and at the same time this poem
highlights Stevens’ enduring hope even among the despair.
—Pepper Austin
Instructor’s comment: For this unit of Modern American Poetry,
we studied the evolution of Wallace Stevens’ poetry and his
attempts to write poems that were both linguistically beautiful and
socially relevant. Pepper chose to examine “Of Modern Poetry,” a
Stevens’ ars poetica that asserts what poetry should do and be. In
this close reading, Pepper pays meticulous attention to Stevens’ use
of diction, repetition, and metaphor. Pepper’s rigorous and
perceptive analysis implicitly argues for how Stevens should be
read: with only the most careful look at his rhetorical choices and
with deep awareness of the complexity of his themes.
— Brian Komei Dempster, Rhetoric and Composition
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Pepper Austin
Why do we read poetry? Why do we write poetry? Why
do we constantly attempt to define our lives? Because
the act of finding is part of human nature or, as Stevens
puts it because the “poem of the mind” is always “in the act of
finding” (line 1). In his poem, “Of Modern Poetry,” he questions
the propensity in humans to search for definition. In the poem, he
makes one emphatic declarative sentence after another about what
defines poetry. However, instead of compounding and reinforcing
a point, each sentence chips away at the infallibility of language.
Through his use of emphatic declarative sentences, anaphora, and
metaphors, and the simultaneous debunking of each, Stevens
builds a progression in which he purposely contradicts everything
he states to show that no definition created by language is definite
but only evanescent: diminishing and yet infinitesimal.
The poem opens with the declarative sentence, “The poem of
the mind in the act of finding / What will suffice” (1-2). But wait,
is that sentence declarative, and is it even a sentence? Ann M.
Gallagher addresses this question in her article “Stevens’s ��Of
Modern Poetry’,” and she finds that “the need for a proper verb in
the statement is not satisfied by the verbal finding” (91).
Therefore, the poet opens with a fragmentary sentence, and it
“becomes apparent that what appears to be a declarative sentence
is really an inverted question: What will suffice in the act of
finding the poem of the mind?” (Gallagher 91). Thus, Stevens’
statement—if read as a question—leads the reader to question if
anything will suffice. His first line, the hook of the poem, cannot
even find the right phrasing for what the poet means to say. How,
then, can the reader expect language to fulfill the poet’s need to
express himself in the rest of the poem? The reader must take
every declarative sentence thereafter with a grain of salt.
Stevens follows his Jabberwocky declarative sentence with
another declarative sentence, but then he undermines his message
with the way he phrases it. In this sentence he rejects all the poetry
preceding the modern period. He states that past poetry did not
have to understand the mind: “It has not always had / To find: the
scene was set; it repeated what / Was in the script” (2-4). Stevens
seems to point the finger at past poetry for only addressing the
aesthetics of poetry instead of epic social concerns, such as World
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War I. However, while this claim seems to take past poetry to task,
the poet once again undermines the declarative quality of what he
says by the way he says it. These lines have a singsong quality and
almost sound like a nursery rhyme with its simple words and
broken-up phrases. Perhaps Stevens gives these lines a childlike
quality, to show the childlike state in which he feels past poetry has
remained. Moreover, and more aptly, the playful quality of these
lines questions not only past poetry but present poetry as well.
To further this theory, he reiterates through metaphor that a
new scene has been set and that present poetry’s “past was a
souvenir” (6). Here, he makes the claim again about the triviality
of past poetry because “a souvenir is after all, a token of
some[thing] else” and “no matter how significant at one time, the
souvenir quickly loses immediacy as the crush of new reminders
crowds out older ones” (Gallagher 92). However, once again
Stevens’ message about the complete rejection of past poetry is
more complicated than it seems. Though a souvenir is a cheap
reminder of something else, the owner of the souvenir still holds
on to it and uses it to look back fondly on the past. Thus, Stevens’
declarative rejection of the past becomes ambiguous and
ambivalent. It implies that past and present poetry have and will
found always find themselves in a quandary of childlike ineptitude,
in which they struggle to express the needs of any given time,
whether aesthetic or epic or both.
Stevens then lets go of the past; however, he continues his
indictment against language. He does this again through
declarative sentences and through anaphora. In the second stanza
he tries to define all of the things that poetry “has to” do or be six
times through the didactic use of “it has to be” and other infinitive
verbs. Certainly, the use of the anaphora often adds rhythm and
reinforces a point being made. However, there is the old story that
on a draft of a preacher’s sermon he wrote next to a certain
paragraph, “not sure on this point, yell louder.” Therefore, while
the anaphora may reinforce a point, it does not explain why the
point is valid; it only “yells louder.” The repetition reflects
overcompensation and thus causes readers to question the authority
and validity of the emphatic statements being forced upon them.
Therefore, Stevens attempts to show us what poetry means through
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Pepper Austin
simple and supposedly clear language, but again the language fails
to offer an adequate definition.
Let us take a closer look at the statements Stevens so
emphatically makes. He claims the following about a poem:
It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
The women of the time. It has to think about war
And it has to find what will suffice. (7-10)
He uses simple clear words and clear phrases. Thus, no ambiguity
should exist in these sentences. However, what is “it”? He uses
the word “it” three times in these four lines and a total of fourteen
times in this short poem (Gallagher 93). Therefore, in order to
understand Stevens’ poem, we not only have to look at the
repetition of the phrase “it has to be,” but we have to understand
who or what “it” represents. Gallagher claims, “though in the first
few lines of the poem the pronoun clearly refers to modern poetry,
as the poem progresses the word becomes ambiguous—referring
somehow to poetry and in another real way to the poet” (93).
Thus, these “clear-cut” sentences reveal that even they have
ambiguities and hidden meanings, leading us to ask these
questions: who or what is the subject of these lines, what is meant
by “suffice,” and how should the “it” meet the men and women of
the time?
Since his use of seemingly definite and clear phrases proves
less than defining and clear, Stevens attempts to clarify the
definition of a poem through another more poetic path: extended
metaphor. He compares poem and poet to the dramatic world. He
declares that a poem/poet has to build its own stage, act a part, and
know what part the audience wants to hear. He comes up with a
Herculean task: a poet and a poem must create his/its own
universe. However, he still does not explain what defines that
universe because with each metaphor, Stevens takes the reader
further and further away from the definition. A metaphor
“involves a transfer of meaning from the word that properly
possesses it to another word which belongs to some shared
category of meaning” (McLaughlin 83). Therefore, a metaphor
helps Stevens tells us quite masterfully and beautifully what a
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poem “has to be” like, but he never tells us what a poem “has to
be.” Metaphors attempt to connect the poem to reality, but they
actually distance the reader further from the point of origin—the
poet’s intended meaning. Thus, as with his use of clear and
definite sentences, Stevens’ use of metaphor shows that language
does not suffice.
He further displays the fallibility of metaphor when he shifts
the figure from an actor to a musical metaphysician. Initially, he
claims that a poet must painstakingly create a whole universe with
an actor, director, audience, and setting. He now, however, rejects
this assertion when he states that a poet/poem is, “A metaphysician
in the dark, twanging / An instrument, twanging a wiry string that
gives / Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses” (20-22). In
these lines a poet/poem is not a creator but merely someone
twanging until “sudden rightnesses” comes to him/it. The wire
string gives the sound of rightness, not of the poet himself. The
poet almost becomes the instrument, while the wire string acts as
the creator. Stevens no longer makes the poet/poem in charge of
his destiny, but makes him determined by it, and thus debunks all
that he claimed as truth before.
Furthermore, he compares the poet to a metaphysician, who
according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) studies “the
branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things.”
On the surface, this reference appears to raise the poet to
unspeakable heights. However, a metaphysician according to the
OED also studies “that which is but one degree from their
Essence” and “fails to see this . . . because he is misled by a
superficial grammatical feature of his language.” Just as a
metaphor only gives something similar to the “Essence,” a
metaphysician, and thus the poet, remains one degree away from
the “Essence” and therefore can only give something similar.
Hence, a poet can never quite capture the essence of what he
means because of the “superficial grammatical features of his
language.” Once again, Stevens shows us that language can never
suffice, and therefore he can never give an adequate definition of
poetry’s purpose or meaning.
And what a sad little world this paints. Why say anything?
Why attempt anything, if nothing will suffice? Right when we
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Pepper Austin
want to despair, Stevens makes yet another declarative sentence;
this one, however, seems plausible. In it he uses the stronger verb
must instead of has, and he follows it with may. Let me clarify.
We must find satisfaction—this much he knows. Otherwise we
will despair, and he follows this “must” with a suggestion and not a
declaration. He writes,
It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. (25-28)
By offering only a suggestion, he alerts us to the fact that he does
not have an exact answer. Instead these actions define these
characters; as the poet attempts to write poetry he defines himself,
and the need is satisfied. The act is enough. No one can reach the
essence; the goal is just to skate, just to dance, just to try.
Through this poem, Stevens discredits all of his naysayers and
all of the people who want someone else to define something for
them. His poems may not fulfill someone else’s requirements, but
they fulfill his need, and they satisfy his thirst. Stevens
demonstrates that language never will say exactly what we want it
to, but that does not mean we quit trying. It is the eternal human
struggle to have someone truly understand us. His poem expresses
that though the definition of poetry is indefinite, poetry is a
celebration of the process of trying. My interpretation of the poem
may not fully encapsulate Stevens’ intentions; however, I am
making an effort, and he is making an effort. And somewhere in
the middle, we find satisfaction.
Works Cited
Gallagher, Ann M. “Stevens’s ‘Of Modern Poetry’.” The Explicator. 50:2
(1992 Winter): 91-93.
McLaughlin, Thomas. “Figurative Language.” Critical Terms For Literary
Study. Eds. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1990. 80-90.
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Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 2003. 11 September
2003 http://0-dictionary.oed.com.usflib.lib.usfca.edu/entrance.dtl>.
Stevens, Wallace. “Of Modern Poetry.” The Collected Poems of Wallace
Stevens. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. 239-240.
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Writer’s comment: William Carlos Williams’ poetry changed
considerably over time. While one of his earlier poems, “The Red
Wheelbarrow,” resonates with the distilled clarity of a haiku, his
later and longest piece, Paterson, weaves memories into a prose-like
monologue. While each piece has successfully captured the
attention of the world of literature and the public, these works
experiment with opposing approaches in terms of poetic form,
voice, and the narrator’s expression of emotion. Although the
poems are stylistically different, both reflect Williams’ unceasing
quest for refinement and revolution, which inspires many
contemporary poets and literary critics to commend and/or criticize
his changing style, including Brian Komei Dempster’s students in
Modern American Poetry.
—Hyun-Young Cho
Instructor’s comment: Throughout my Modern American Poetry
course, I encouraged students to view poems not as isolated objects
but in the larger context of any given poet’s work. In her
thoughtful essay Hyun does just this. Using representative poems
by William Carlos Williams, Hyun shows how his relationship to
imagism changed and the ways he integrated a speaker’s
perspective into his work. Hyun’s reading of Williams’ poetry is
ambitious and sophisticated, deftly blending her own assertions
and significant literary criticism. In articulating Williams’ artistic
journey, Hyun speaks to the difficulties of balancing imagery and
lyric reflection, the constant challenges of the poetic process.
— Brian Komei Dempster, Rhetoric and Composition
The Progression of
William Carlos Williams’ Use of Imagery
Hyun-Young Cho
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When Ezra Pound, H.D., and Richard Aldington published
the basic tenets of imagism in Poetry in March of 19131,
this new literary vogue shook the world of literature and
writing. Soon many poets joined this movement in which an image
is presented as precisely and tersely as possible without the poet’s
impression of a visual object or scene, and Williams was one of the
enthusiastic followers. While the earlier stage of his career was
committed to the principles of imagism, Williams seemed to grow
dissatisfied with the limits of imagism in that its compressed format
and concentrated treatment of language and images often restricted
the poet from exploring his own perspectives. Although he did not
discard vivid imagery, Williams began to allow his own views to
enter his poems. And gradually the objective presentation of an image,
once the center of his poetry, surrendered to the poet’s active
engagement in personalizing an image. This progression is reflected
in the body of his poetry and can be summarized by comparing three
poems. “The Red Wheelbarrow” represents the poet as a purer
imagist. On the other hand, in “Spring and All” Williams blends his
personal perspective and objective imagery. Finally, “The Sparrow”
presents a more radical alternative to imagism by presenting images
that are fully charged with the speaker’s personal emotion and
impressions.
One of Williams’ early poems, “The Red Wheelbarrow,” remains
so true to the imagists’ proposals that it earns Williams a place as one
of the significant figures in the school of imagism. The imagery of
the objects is presented with a great degree of concentration, and the
language is succinct with little personal impression. The poem is
compressed and short as illustrated below:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens. (lines 1-8)
The Progression of William Carlos Williams’ Use of Imagery
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Hyun-Young Cho
The poem is so visual that it looks much like a photo or a still painting
of some outdoor setting. The vessel is highlighted by its shiny surface
since it is wet, and the sunlight is reflected on the surface of it. The
chickens stress the presence of the wheelbarrow by juxtaposition.
First, “white” contrasts with “red,” enhancing the visual effects of
the poem. And the metal, angular sense of the